Manhattan Review InFocus BLOG

Earlier 2008, Thomas Robertson, dean of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Frank Brown, dean of INSEAD, announced a four-year renewal of the two business schools’ alliance initiated seven years ago in 2001, which they mutually consider has been a great success.

 Synergy

The impetus for the alliance is to promote the internationalization of both schools’ programs in terms of MBA student exchange, faculty exchange, executive education, research collaboration, developing joint PhD curricula, and joint alumni initiatives. With INSEAD’s campuses in France and Singapore and Wharton’s campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco, students and faculty are able to derive experience from three continents, all of which are vital players in international business.

Joint MBA Program - Size & More

Since its inception, the alliance has educated 800 MBAs, 50-75 from each school per year, through two-month exchanges giving students access to a broader and deeper selection of coursework led by regional faculty and assistance by local career coordinators.

Nearly the same number of executives have taken advantage of the exchange, enrolling in executive education programs like “Strategic R&D Management” and “Leading an Effective Sales Force”, which are taught by faculty of both schools at all the campus locations. The executive training offered by the partnership also makes company-specific curricula available for its multinational clients.

The networking potential for alumni is also immense with 82,000 Wharton alumni spread over 148 countries and 37,000 INSEAD alumni in even more locations.

Research Program

The research opportunities created by the partnership have been substantial as well. Through the creation of the jointly governed and funded INSEAD-Wharton Center for Global Research and Education over 60 faculty members have taken long-term teaching or research positions ranging from six months to two years at one of the partner schools.

Vision

What will the next four years bring to the partnership? Robertson says he would like to continue developing a pool of multinational clients looking for global solutions, which he believes the alliance is uniquely situated to provide. Both deans remark that further development of PhDs is desirable given the constant need for excellent faculty. “The more quality academics we can produce, the better off both institutions are going to be and the better off the academic community in general will be,” says Brown.

Near-Term Initiatives

• A plan to distribute proprietary case studies developed at INSEAD to Wharton;
• Workshops for staff across campuses that will focus on ideal practice in diverse elements of business ranging from training to diversity management;
• Continued joint alumni events;
• Opportunities for peer reviews of alumni work by both alumni populations.

More information regarding the partnership can be found here: http://www.insead.edu/alliance/

George Yip’s objective in his newly appointed deanship at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, as indicated in one of his interviews with Business Week, is simple: establish the Netherlands school in the league of the most elite European business schools. Using a soccer analogy (or football, depending on what side of the pond you find yourself), he says he wants to take the school from the Premiership to the Champions’ League.

 Yip said there are three primary means through which he intends to achieve this goal.

o  Diversity - The first is to attract more American and Germans. While the Erasmus school is already highly international, with 40 nationalities represented in its 100 students, the ability to attract Americans is a necessity for any school that desires an elite reputation.

 o  Intellectual Powerhouse - The second is for faculty to publish more research in managerial journals, best-selling books, in the hopes of growing the school’s reputation as an intellectual powerhouse.

 o  Expanded Executive Education Programs - Lastly, Yip emphasized that the customized executive education programs will be complemented with open enrollment programs as well.

European vs. US MBA

Yip says that European schools are becoming better positioned to compete with top American programs since the gap in the quality of faculty has largely disappeared and the sort of international experience that European business schools are able to provide and that is essential for the next generation of MBAs is less readily available in American schools.

 Yip emphasized while the ethnic or geographic diversity available in Europe is important, there is a real difference in philosophy as well. It is generally recognized that American business schools place a greater emphasis on shareholder value and competition, rather than stakeholder management in a more holistic approach to factor in the interests of all parties such as employees, communities and government.

Focus on Sustainability

The current trends towards sustainable business practices and eco-friendly design may also work towards his four-year target of establishing RSM in the top 20 business schools worldwide. Seated in a nation below sea level, the Netherlands is at the forefront of sustainable development, and Yip intends to continue expanding a planning center for sustainability with an emphasis on climate change and incorporating sustainable business practices into RSM’s MBA programs as well.

Biographical Background

Yip is the school’s first foreign dean and his diverse background embodies what he considers to be the school’s strengths. A dual American and British citizen, he was born in Vietnam, lived in Hong Kong and Burma in his youth, studied economics and law at Cambridge, before completing an MBA and DBA (Doctor at Business Administration) at Harvard. He spent the consecutive two decades working for Pricewaterhouse, while serving faculty positions at Harvard and UCLA, with visiting positions at Georgetown and Stanford, before returning to England as professor at Judge Business School at Cambridge and moving into a position at London Business School.

The addition of a presentation component in the University of Chicago’s graduate application also acknowledges Microsoft’s PowerPoint as an essential tool for today’s tech-savvy, business world. “No one in business today could pretend to be facile in business communications without PowerPoint,” said a declarative Clarke L. Caywood, associate professor of integrated marketing at Northwestern University in an interview with The Chicago Tribune. “It’s like being able to read.”

First created in 1984 at Forethought, a small software company in the Silicon Valley, the visual aid program was originally titled Presenter. In 1987, Presenter was acquired by Microsoft, where it quickly became known as PowerPoint. Now PowerPoint is an internationally recognized program, with 500 million registered copies creating an estimated 30 million presentations a day, but despite PowerPoint’s obvious popularity in the corporate world at large, until Chicago’s recent addition PowerPoint hasn’t been utilized in MBA graduate applications.

Surveying other top B schools recently to see if they too are eagerly adding the presentation element to their own graduate applications, surprisingly, many are doggedly sticking to the essay question. Brent Chrite, associate dean and director of the MBA program at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, recently told The Arizona Daily Star, “[the PowerPoint presentation’s] an innovative and interesting idea. It’s just not clear to me how that format lets you capture the [applicant’s] depth of insight that’s important to us.” A recent email from the admissions committee at Dartmouth College’s Tuck [SCHOOL OF BUSINESS] shares a similar, albeit frank response to the PowerPoint-presentations-in-future-applications query, “We do not require and do not envision requiring a powerpoint.”

Countering this, Martinelli asserts that today’s business environment consistently demands brief yet informative communication. MBA applicants should then readily reflect their capacity to work under these constraints, and a PowerPoint presentation is the best means of judging that quality. “Whether it be e-mail, PowerPoint or a two-minute elevator speech, successful businesspeople need to learn how to express their full ideas in very restrictive formats. We feel the new application requirement represents this very common challenge,” said Martinelli in an interview with EditorsChoice.

Perhaps, as Martinelli told BusinessWeek, there is a “buzz in the market,” and more B schools in future MBA graduate applications will eventually adopt the PowerPoint presentation as a valid form of an applicant’s disposition and achievements. For now, though, many B schools are concerning themselves with enhancing their essay questions. Many top B schools now have more contemporary essay queries like Harvard’s, “How have you experienced culture shock?” and the University of California, Berkley’s Haas {SCHOOL OF BUSINESS}’s, “If you could have dinner with one individual in the past, present, or future, who would it be and why?” that provoke more personal responses.

In our research about full-tuition scholarship at business schools outside of the US, we found that quite a number of business schools offer partial tuition scholarships that also significantly cut the costs of a management education. We couldn’t keep this information to ourselves!

London Business School - London, England

Number of partial scholarships available: Over 30 different scholarships

Average class size for full-time MBA program: about 205

How to apply:  Some are awarded solely on consideration of the original MBA application. Others require submission of additional material. Many scholarships are based on the candidate’s country of origin. A number of scholarships are available solely to female candidates. 

Lancaster University Management School - Lancaster, England

Number of partial scholarships available: 3 different types 

Average class size for full-time MBA program: about 40-50

How to apply:  Only awarded to candidates who have been awarded a place in the program with the submission of general application and evidence of exceptional leadership qualities. One particular scholarship is designed for German-speaking students and sponsored exclusively for members of the German website e-fellows.net. 

IESE Business School, University of Navarra - Campuses in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain

Number of partial scholarships available: about 15 different types of scholarships, 1 of them is awarded to 20-30 students per year

Average class size for full-time MBA program: about 215

How to apply: No separate scholarship application is required although some scholarships are awarded to strictly to female candidates, candidates from developing countries, or candidates from Asian countries. 

INSEAD - Fontainebleau, France

Number of partial scholarships available: about 45 different types of scholarships

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 830

How to apply: For most of the scholarships, no separate scholarship application is required. Some are based on merit and some based on financial need. 

Copenhagen Business School - Copenhagen, Denmark

Number of partial scholarships available: 18 scholarships for students from outside the EU/EEA

Average class size for full-time MBA program: about 40

How to apply: No separate application or additional materials necessary to be eligible. Students receiving a scholarship may not receive a scholarship from their home country or be entitled to a state education grant or any other public support in Denmark.

International Institute of Management and Development (IMD) - Lausanne, Switzerland

Number of partial scholarships available: 7

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 90 

How to apply: Accepted candidates for the program are considered for most of the scholarships. 

In this article, we wanted to expand on the list of US business schools to provide information for students interested in pursuing their management education outside of the US. Many top non-US business schools are also very generous with full-tuition fellowships and scholarships.

Below is our compiled list (for more information on the scholarship offering, click on the names of each school):

The Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto - Toronto, Canada

Number of fellowships awarded each year: : 8 in total

- 5 general full-tuition scholarships

- 1 for the top Canadian male applicant

- 1 for the top Canadian female applicant, and

- 1 for the top international student 

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 264

How to apply: No separate scholarship application is required. Candidates are automatically considered for scholarships during the application review.

HEC Montreal - Montreal, Canada

Number of fellowships awarded each year: about 6

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 175

How to apply: No separate scholarship application is required. 

Nyenrode Business Universiteit - Breukelen, the Netherlands

Number of fellowships awarded each year: 12 in total

- 5 for students of any nationality

- 7 for students from specific regions/countries including Mexico, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia

Average class size for full-time MBA program: Not listed

How to apply: No separate scholarship application is required. 

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus Graduate School of Business - Rotterdam,the Netherlands

Number of fellowships awarded each year: 4

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 350

How to apply: No separate scholarship application is required.

Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne - Melbourne, Australia 

Number of fellowships awarded each year: 3 in total

- 2 for students who are descended from, identify with, and are accepted by a designated Australian Indigenous community and

- 1 for an international student

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 90 

How to apply: All successful MBA candidates are automatically considered for scholarship support and successful candidates are notified as part of the admissions process.

Westminster Business School, University of Westminster - London, England

Number of fellowships awarded each year: Not announced 

Average class size for full-time MBA program: Not announced

How to apply:  Selection is based on excellent scholastic record in undergraduate studies and/or evidence of excellence in previous employment, business and community service. International applicants from developing countries are considered. 

China Europe International Business School - 3 campuses in China: Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen 

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 6

Average class size for full-time MBA program: 196

How to apply:  Selection is based on financial need.

The programs above also all offered numerous partial scholarships. So, again, we say-do NOT be scared of tuition prices! Inquire at your dream schools to find out about their scholarship offerings.