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University of Chicago's Booth EMBA Program was ranked #1 in 2011

With the economy in stasis, an increasing number of professionals looking to return to school to get advanced business degrees are unwilling to give up their current positions when finding a new job after their graduation is no longer assured.

Executive MBA programs, offer an excellent alternative to traditional full time MBA educations- where they would be expected to leave their current roles, and then hope that they will be able to find better positions after completing their post graduate education.

Part time programs take about 1-2  additional years to complete versus full-time two year MBA’s. Many believe that the job security they are afforded and ability continue earning an income during the degree, is well worth it.

The diversity of programs offered for EMBA students is growing as well, since an increasing number of applicants for EMBA programs are no longer having their education paid for by their employers. Now they are free to make the decision of where to attend themselves. This means finding new and innovative ways to attract students, like increased offerings of electives in growth areas like entrepreneurship and leadership workshops.

EMBA programs will no doubt continue to gain in popularity as more and more working professionals will be expected to have advanced post graduate degrees to remain competitive in their chosen career fields.

http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/20111108/top-part-time-mba-programs-of-2011/

Applying to MBA programs takes time and money – and it may seem like getting a result of “waitlisted” is just about as bad as receiving a death sentence. That’s not always the case, and knowing the right strategy to undertake in this case may tremendously improve your chances of getting off the waitlist and into your dream school.

Tom Kania, one of our top admissions consultants and a former admissions board member for the Wharton Business School, points out some key tactics to improve your chances of successfully getting off the waitlist and accepted into your school of choice:

1. Have an experienced second opinion to help advise and refine your application materials. This will greatly increase your chances of acceptance, and make the most of the additional time spent on your application.
2. Maintain communication with your school of choice and make it immediately clear, following the notification of your waitlist assignment, that you are serious about your attendance in the program if accepted. IMPORTANT: You may be asked to make a deposit to hold your place in the program that is nonrefundable if you are accepted and decide not to attend. Therefore, be sure that you will absolutely ready to attend should you get accepted off the waitlist.  Also, be aware, that because you are in a holding position, if another previously accepted student declines admission, even only 1 day before commencement and you are selected off the waitlist to fill that slot, you must attend or forfeit the deposit.
3. Decide what supporting materials you will submit to the board in hopes of getting them to select you. Tom warns that, “Applicants should be careful to censor what materials they send to their desired school. Flooding them with additional letters and notifications of small achievements can ultimately work against you, as the admissions board is already attempting to sift through application materials from thousands of students”.
4. Make sure that you are prepared for the additional time and emotional energy that will go into the uncertainty of acceptance for the next few months. Are you willing to put yourself through this? Or, might it be better to move on and make a decision amongst the schools you were accepted to. This is a highly personal decision, but the stress and uncertainty of choosing to pursue a waitlist assignation are not to be undertaken lightly.

For more information, please read our MBA Waitlist Strategy

HBS Culture 

Harvard Business School has been implementing  many new changes that all focus on collaboration.  Every admitted student is given a face-to-face interview with the admission committee to get a better idea who they are as people, and how they work with others.  Collaboration is ultimately the tool to making a difference in the world.

HBS MBA classes are always diverse.  There is no ideal HBS student.  The admissions committee is looking for students from a variety of backgrounds to present a host of perspectives and get students thinking creatively. Sure they will share common traits such as strong analytical skills,and good leadership qualities.  But the important thing is that the students can work well with each other and bring their own unique perspective to the table, ultimately creating a more comprehensive and beneficial program.

New Initiatives at HBS

Harvard is encouraging undergraduate seniors to apply to HBS throughout the year instead of the usual just during the summer now that Harvard 2+2 Program is up and running.  In keeping with these new changes, Harvard has added new course requirements for first year students emphasizing small group collaboration and hands-on application of the material.  The new course series, called The Field Immersion Experience for Leadership Development (FIELD) is detailed in the 3 Modules below.

1) Leadership Module

The Leadership Module emphasizes small group work and close collaboration with the faculty to provide insight into the best leadership qualities.

2) Module 2

Module 2 will place new student in 14 different cities in 11 emerging economy countries to receive hands on experience in product development exercises.  THe 11 countries will include China, South Africa, and Vietnam, among others.

3) Integrative Exercise in Entrepreneurship

In this module, the student start their own companies, focusing on marketing and customer service.

HBS Financial Aid Information

Harvard Business School encourages all undergraduate students to apply no matter their financial standing.  Financial Aid is not applied for until after the acceptance of the student. Further, the Harvard Alumni have been very receptive to supporting new HArvard students and their education.

Some Quick HBS Admissions Facts

• Harvard looks at their prospective student holistically, never using a point system or structured formula to judge the quality of the student
• Harvard Business School class is about 39 percent women
• About one-third of the class members are non-U.S. citizens

For more details, please also read our Harvard Business School Admissions Tips.

Obtaining an Masters of Business Administration can provide you with a world of possibilities in you career. As Dave Wilson, president and chief executive officeer of the Graduate Mangement Admissions Council and a 1965 MBA grad from University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, says,  ”An MBA opens the door,”  ”When you get in there, it gives you a sense of perspective, a balance, a world view that is often different from what you would have had before you took the degree.”

Most student will give credit to the success they have had in the working world, to the material and lesson they learned in business school.  Further, business school gives students the opportunity to really find themselves and learn what they are truly passionate about, ultimately translating this passion into a career. Under this pretense, Bloomberg Businessweek has tracked the growth of the top MBA grad of 1991 and examined what an MBA and 20 years of work has done for them.  We have copied the five examples that they include below.  Their stories show what an MBA can really give and what doors this degree can open.

Tom Anderson

Then: MIT Sloan School of Management Class of 1991, Seley Scholar, the most distinguished of Sloan’s achievement awards honoring outstanding leadership, professional promise, high academic achievement, and contributions to the school

Now: CEO, Education Dynamics

Tom Anderson graduated from Dartmouth in 1984 with a math degree and a plan to go into medicine. But after speaking to some doctors who expressed regret with their career choices due to the HMO mess that characterized the 1980s, Anderson changed his mind. He took a job teaching high school math for a few years and then joined Paine Webber as a stockbroker. He spent three years at the firm, and in that time he found himself drawn to asset management. But to make the job switch, he was going to need an MBA.

Anderson went out on a limb and applied to only one school: Sloan. “Fortunately I got in,” he says. “I went there expecting to go into asset management, but one of the great things about the top business schools is that you get incredible exposure to a bunch of different companies and different fields in different professions.”

After earning his MBA, Anderson signed on at McKinsey & Co. He worked there for the next decade, moving up the corporate ladder and eventually becoming a partner. He left McKinsey and joined Capital One, where he successfully ran, then sold, one of its medical lending businesses. Then, after taking on a similar role at three other businesses, Anderson gained a reputation as a star CEO in the private equity world.

Anderson now fuels a passion for education as the CEO of Education Dynamics, which aims to help adult learners find the right schools and the right degree. “Sloan was a life-changing experience for me on many dimensions,” he says. “If I could have figured out how to get paid and do that my whole life, I would have been a permanent student.”

Martha Blue

Then: University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School Class of 1991, Valedictorian

Now: Co-founder, Real Change Strategies

Martha Blue’s career began in fixed income sales and trading at Goldman Sachs after she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in December 1986 with an accounting degree from the Wharton School. She stayed at Goldman for two years before deciding it wasn’t for her.

Blue took a six-month break in Florence, Italy, then returned stateside with a plan to earn her MBA. After spending a weekend in Chapel Hill, N.C., she knew that UNC’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business was her MBA destination. “The school had so much energy and so many people dedicated to making it a world-class program,” Blue says. “It was the most realistic preparation for a work environment you could get at a business school.”

Upon graduating from Kenan-Flagler, Blue spent four years at McKinsey & Co., while trying to decide which industry she could bear spending the next 20 years of her life in. She ultimately settled on the nonprofit sector. After working for a conservation group for a year, she founded Blue Consulting in 1996, which served a mix of for-profit and nonprofit clients. Then, in 2007, she co-founded Real Change Strategies, which only serves nonprofit organizations.

Two decades later, Blue says her MBA was “crucial” to her career development. “It gave me a broad view that I would not otherwise have gotten,” she says.

Peter Ebell

Then: Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business Class of 1991, Valedictorian

Now: Founder, Bellwood Capital

South African by birth, Peter Ebell earned an engineering degree in 1986 from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He served in the navy for two years after graduation and then found a job at Johannesburg Consolidated Investments, focused on the gold and platinum mining industry.

After a year and a half, Ebell began to wonder what it would take to move up the corporate ladder into a “top job.” It was quickly evident he needed a strong background in finance to get those kinds of positions, so he decided to enroll in a one-year full-time MBA program at Southern Methodist. While there, he became especially impressed with the finance program, specifically the training in derivatives.

Once he obtained his MBA, Ebell returned to South Africa and became an equity analyst, eventually convincing the higher-ups at his firm that derivatives were something important to get involved in. Four years ago he moved back to the U.S. and is now in the process of seeding his own hedge fund, Bellwood Capital, in Massachusetts. “I’m very happy with my career path as it’s turned out,” Ebell says. “I wouldn’t say I learned a lot at Cox. It indicated to me where my interests lay, effectively, and because of that I was able to develop those interests.”

Andrew Grengos

Then: UCLA Anderson School of Management Class of 1991, Edward W. Carter Fellow, awarded to the top 2 percent of each full-time graduating class at Anderson

Now: CEO, Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals

Andrew Grengos graduated from MIT in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering only to find that he didn’t think it would make for an interesting career. He worked for Morgan Stanley for two years before deciding he needed to be more well-rounded, having never taken a business or economics class in his undergraduate studies.

The Australia native looked at graduate schools on the West Coast and settled on Anderson after hearing about its strong finance program. “I truly had these big functional expertise blank spots,” Grengos says. “Knowing those blank spots and filling them, I absolutely think it was very helpful to me.”

After paying for his MBA completely out of pocket, Grengos spent more than six years working for McKinsey & Co., before moving into the biotech industry. He served as the chief business officer and head of corporate strategy for companies such as Chiron, Dynavax Technologies (DVAX), and Amgen (AMGN), before he decided he was ready to try his hand at running a company. He chose Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals based on its work in the neurodegenerative disease space, an area of interest to him because of his father’s bout with Alzheimer’s. “I thought there’d be some good karma spending a chunk of my career working in a place that was trying to help people like my father,” he says.

Scott Moyer

Then: Georgia Institute of Technology MBA Class of 1991, Student of the Year

Scott Moyer graduated from University of California, Riverside in 1987 with a degree in administrative studies, a “fairly generic degree,” he says, that lacked specificity.

After working for an engineer for a short while, Moyer followed his fiancée to Atlanta and enrolled in Georgia Tech’s full-time MBA program in 1989. He tested out of three of his core MBA courses and was able to take electives with the second-year MBAs. “Many of the (second-year students) were seriously trying to get into a full-time job,” Moyer says. “I figured out early on that if I could get straight A’s my first quarter, that would get me an internship.” And he did, with former Big Five accounting firm Arthur Andersen.

Moyer graduated with his MBA and CPA in 1991 and was hired full-time at Arthur Andersen. He worked there for four years before deciding he wanted to do more consulting work. He later worked with Coca-Cola (KO) and Siemens One (SI), where he became chief financial officer in 2001.

A recovering serial CFO, Moyer now works as a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers overseeing consulting projects. “I wouldn’t be anywhere if I hadn’t gone back to get an MBA,” Moyer says. “I was drifting in the wind trying to figure out what I wanted to do, and going to Tech made it very easy for me to focus on an area of expertise.”

“Standing Out” in a Business School Application

The desire to “stand out” (while inherent in all applicants), is not what the admissions committee wants you to be thinking about during your application process.  The most important aspect is to answer the questions clearly, making sure you are doing the best job you can to tell YOUR story; instead of constantly trying to put yourself in a context outside of where you think the other applicants are.

I have heard admissions committee members say numerous times that over-thinking and over-crafting your application can ultimately hurt your overall chances of acceptance.  Often times, students attempt to say exactly what they think the admission committee wants to hear, when what the admission committee REALLY wants to hear is the student’s story told truthfully and thoughtfully.

The Role the GMAT in your MBA application

The GMAT Exam is a chance for the student to prepare for an exam and take on a challenge.  Of course, no student walks into an exam without preparing first. Use your GMAT efforts and scores to highlight the areas that you think may be missing from you undergraduate and work experience. If you do not have much quantitative experience, focus on that area of the GMAT to portray to admissions committee that you can do great work in that area as well. Remember it is still just one piece of the mosaic that is your application.

Essays

Many students get very anxious about the essay portion of an MBA application because they believe that this is the section that they have the most control over (unlike the recommendations, undergraduate records, and your job).  However, it is important to remember that the essay is just another portion of the holistic presentation of your application.  It is not a writing contest, but more so, another tool to present YOU as a prospective business school student. So personalize it. Focus on the areas of your life that you are most proud and passionate about.  These items will ultimately be your strongest point in conveying your growth over time and your ability to succeed.

Recommendations

Try to pick a person to recommend you that you have known for a long time. Admissions Committees look for recommendations that are personalized and give somewhat of an inside look into how the student works and presents themselves.

Diversity on an Application

Diversity is an important factor to consider when applying to business school. However, it must be done so in the right way.  Many times, students think they must emphasize the diversity that they have been exposed to in the workplace or at school.  However, there are many different types of diversity to consider and a very important one is the way in which you lead.  From the student leader who wants to be president of the United States, to the entrepreneur who likes to work in small teams and getting a new business up and running, business schools look for Diversity of Character and want to find student who can lead in effective and creative ways.

Hope these tips help! For more tips, please visit our MBA Admissions Advice.

General Information

• It’s a 4-hour Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) that can be taken at any one of many test centers around the world 5 or 6 days a week.
• You may take the GMAT only once every 31 days and no more than five times within any 12-month period.
• This policy applies even if you cancel your score within that time period, and all of your scores and cancellations within the last five years will be reported to the institutions you designate as score recipients.

•  It’s made up of three sections, the first being the Analytical Writing Assessment, or AWA.
• The good news is that there are only two questions in this section, the bad news is that they’re both essays.
• One question asks you to analyze an issue, the other asks that you analyze an argument.
• You are given thirty minutes to answer each question.
• Your score on this question will range anywhere from a 0 to 6 (in increments of .5), and this section won’t have any affect on any other GMAT score.

• After finishing the AWA, the next section you’ll encounter will be the Math section.
• There are 37 questions in this section, and about four of them will be trial questions which won’t count towards your actual score.
• You’ll have seventy-five minutes to answer an assortment of Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency questions.
• Your score will range anywhere from 0-60, with a mean score of 35/45^th percentile.

• When you’re done with the Math section, you’re going to move into the last section: Verbal.
• There are 41 questions in this section, and just like with the Math section, you’ll be given 75 minutes to answer all of them and four questions will be trial questions that won’t be counted towards your actual score.
• There are three different kinds of question in this section: Critical Reasoning, Sentence Correction, and Reading Comprehension.
• Your possible score will range anywhere from 0-60, with a mean score of about 27.3/46%.
• In total, you’ll be given four hours to complete the GMAT and your overall score will range anywhere from 200-800.

Time to explore the emerging popularity of the specialized MBA!  This may come as a surprise to those you wanting to pursue a more general MBA, but it appears for some people something more specialized is preferable.

In an article a while ago, the author gives us the example of Adam Krueckenberg, 37, who had a great job as a vice president at Fidelity, but who wanted to return to school for his MBA.  Boston College was the school that sparked his interest and not for any other reason than it offered exactly what he was looking for: a dual MBA/MS in church management and pastoral ministry.  This program has been offered at Boston College since 2005.

Krueckenberg goes onto say: “I wanted a career that was more spiritually fulfilling.  I wouldn’t have been able to train for that in a more traditional setting.”

This recent trend, indicated by the Journal, “has crept into most field over the past few decades, but few have embraced it more enthusiastically than the graduate business schools.”  Since 1990, there has been a shift in MBAs becoming more and more specialized, ranging from subjects such as aerospace, wine management, luxury goods, real estate, and energy management.

The percentage of business school students enrolled in specialized programs has risen by about 4% each year since 2001.  All in all, more than 1/5 of business schools students are seeking a specialized degree.

How does a specialized business degree work?  Evidently, such programs don’t focus on the big picture of their focus, rather they zero in on practical and commercial applications.  There are schools such as the University of Chicago and Columbia, which have rather broad business degrees with concentrations like finance and marketing, but then there are schools like the University of Wisconsin in Madison that has made a niche for itself as being a specialized MBA Mecca.

The University of Wisconsin eradicated its general MBA in 2004, focusing, instead, on 13 specializations – some of which include market research and real estate.  Students who know exactly what they want to do are often attracted to specialized MBAs, in addition to older applicants with business experience who wants to change fields altogether.

Other specialized programs, such as the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business, are at an advantage because of their location.  The University of Oklahoma is right in the midst of pure oil country and many graduates pursue a career in the oil field as executives.  Rutgers University, on the other hand, within such proximity to Johnson & Johnson as Mereck, has a pharmaceutical focus, which often attracts students to work in New Jersey after graduation.

On an international level, such specialized schools were adopted early, especially in France.  The Essec Business School near Paris focuses entirely on international luxury and brand management, accepting only 40 students a year and conducting classes in English.  The Bordeaux Management School attracts students interested in the wine and spirits field with the location enriching their studies dramatically.

Does this seem contradictory in an economic environment where a general MBA might be smarter than a specialized one?  Hess concludes: “…going deep instead of wide seems to fit right in with an increasingly segmented world.”

There seems to be an interesting trend happening amongst undergraduate liberal arts programs all across the country.  While it seems a course in finance or general business was hardly what undergrads were looking for, there is now a higher demand for such courses.

Business Week’s reporter Adam Fusfeld claims: “For liberal arts students, a little bit of business knowhow is a powerful thing, giving them the confidence they need to work in a business setting.”  For students vying for full-time jobs after graduation, schools don’t want them to appear at a disadvantage.  Hence, courses like Introduction to Accounting, Business Management, Human Resources Management and Business Communications are becoming options for Philosophy, English and History majors.  Why the sudden interest in business courses?  Could it be the recent ongoing economic recession?

Some schools, like Northwestern, which terminated its undergraduate business program 41 years ago, are offering certificate programs for students who have fulfilled a certain number of credits with a B-average GPA.  Such types of certificates appear to appeal to students, as it’s something they can add to their resumes when applying for internships and full-time employment. Since the start of the economic downturn in 2008, there has been an increased interest in such business certificate-like undergraduate business programs all over the country.

While the United States still holds a firm stance on the importance of a broad liberal arts education during one’s undergraduate years, perhaps a basic understanding of finance and business would be advantageous to all students, no matter what their eventual focus may be.  While the recession has certainly caused some negative effects on the workplace, perhaps this is an unusual advantage for all undergraduate-bound students in the future.

According to a recent article in Business Week titled: “GMAT: The MBA Job Seeker’s Best Friend” – it appears that many schools are encouraging students to take the GMAT time and time again.  A very eye-opening article by Anne VanderMey, it seems the GMAT is not only important for MBA admittance, but also for job recruiting after graduation.

According to VanderMey, with companies being flooded with resumes due to the recent economic recession, it appears recruiters are using GMAT scores to weed out applicants.  This is unusual, as never before has the GMAT taken on such added weight, but it appears for some companies, your score could very well be the factor that gets you an actual interview.

Due to this, professors and career services directors are encouraging students to retake the GMAT time and time again thanks to the tough recruiting climate.  VanderMey profiles several schools that are taking this advice seriously and putting it into practice:

• University of Texas’s McCombs School of Business: Stacey Rudnick, director of MBA services is advising recent admits with mediocre GMAT scores to consider retaking the test if they think they can score higher.
• University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business: Mendoza sent a letter to its 2011 class reminding students of the importance of the GMAT when applying to prestigious firms.  The school has offered a four-day crash course for students who wish to retake the test.  Mendoza’s director of MBA career development claims: “We see a large number of consulting companies, some investment banks and a couple of corporations all looking at both GMAT and undergrad MBA GPAs.  These companies are looking for a sustained record of academic excellence.”
• Thunderbird School of Global Management: Kip Harrel, president of the MBA Career Services Council, claims that students’ average GMAT score is a primary factor in deciding where companies choose to recruit.
• Darden School of Business: Jack Oakes, director of career services, claims that he sometimes advises candidates with scores in the mid-600s to retake the test if they are looking to land top-shelf consulting or banking positions.
• Goizueta Business School: Wendy Tsung, executive director of MBA career services, states: “Because the economy is so bad, and there’s so many people applying for positions, companies are looking for different ways to reduce the number of resumes that they go through.  Of the reasons to throw out an application – GPA, undergraduate institution, years of work experience – the GMAT is an ‘easy one.’”

As suspected, a person’s quantitative GMAT score does seem to be linked to salary while some GMAT scores appear to be linked to managerial status. However, VanderMey informs us that not every company considers GMAT scores to be important when considering new hires.  At the University of Connecticut’s School of Business, for example, the executive director was never even asked for GMAT scores from its student body.

It appears, however, that a high GMAT score simply helps you get your foot in the door for the actual interview.  A high score, in general, won’t get you the job of your dreams, but it will get you into speaking with someone face-to-face.  VanderMey quotes Mareza Larizadeh, the founder of Doostang, a career networking site popular with MBA students: “The GMAT isn’t going to get you in.  But it’s something that can prevent you from getting in the door.”

While it seems the GMAT is becoming important for more than just MBA admittance, VanderMey concludes (along with the above schools) that ultimately, the personal elements of the job search – interviews and references, primarily, will always be more important than test scores.

Dr. Joern Meissner, Founder and Chairman of Manhattan Review, has written an opinion editorial for the MBA supplement of one of Germany’s leading daily newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ).

In particular, he discusses which characteristics a successful MBA student needs to have. He argues that good quantitative skills are essential for a manager, but alone are not enough. Social skills and teamwork are mandatory supplements for long-term success and have often been neglected in business school education. He proceeds then to discuss Lancaster University Management School’s leadership role in integrating these aspects into the current curriculum.

Dr. Meissner also mentions well-known academic Henry Mintzberg who is famous for his criticism of current MBA Programs. One of his arguments is that while case studies are in theory useful to get a feel for the daily life of a manager, they also undermine the importance of real-life work experience. The fact is that co-workers and subordinates aren’t just a set of data, but complex individuals who require more than analysis and strategies to be led effectively.

The founder of Manhattan Review already stressed the importance of a strong and impressive personality in addition to academic achievements in his previous FAZ Article from 2007. In his current article, he shows how this translates into the requirements for success in the business world. Quantitative skills are merely half the bet and social competence is a must for aspiring top managers.

An English translation, titled “It’s in the Mix: The Career Success Factors of MBA Graduates” is available in his blog.