Recent admission trends indicate that even though you have a high GPA and good or perfect SAT scores, it’s not a given that you’ll get admission to your first choice school, so it’s wise to have as many back-ups as you can to optimize the final result of your college application process without waiting for another entire year. As a matter of fact, many students are applying to as many as 10 or 15 universities. This is primarily attributed to the Common Application form, which can be downloaded from the Internet and sent online to as many as 300 schools nationwide.

However, the results of this survey of first-year college students is relieving: 70% of these students say that they ended up at their first choice school, and most students are ultimately happy with their choice of college.  At first this may seem surprising, especially since schools like Yale accepted fewer than ten percent of the 20,000 students who applied last year, and both Harvard and Columbia accepted just more than 10 percent, but there are many reasons why students end up at specific schools, as both the students and the college make great endeavors to find a right fit.

Interest in ethics courses and student activities concerned with corporate responsibility has significantly grown. Students at Columbia formed a Leadership and Ethics Board that holds lectures about business and ethics. Ten years ago, Wharton had one ethics class that was required. Now, there are seven professors teaching several ethics course offerings that are popular among students. Wharton has also had the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research since 1997.

Recent graduates are growing more concerned with corporate social responsibility. This is not to say that graduates will not be interested in high-paying jobs at big companies, but they’ll think about how they earn their income and how corporations impact the environment, the community, and their employees’ quality of life.

So who’s taking the pledge, and how? Here are examples of how students at two of the top business schools are promising to be ethical in business.

• Around 20 percent of Harvard Business School’s graduating class have signed “The MBA Oath,” a voluntary pledge to act responsibly and ethically in business practices.
• Students at Columbia Business School must pledge to an honor code that states: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

Most of us think that getting a management education simultaneously means earning an MBA and accumulating a large amount of debt in student loans. Inspired by a recent article from BusinessWeek which challenged this notion with a report on full-tuition fellowships, we performed extensive research and data collection on our own and summarized our findings in three segments.

Today, we will present key data of full-tuition fellowships from many of the top US management programs including Berkeley’s Haas, Columbia, and University of Chicago. In the next two articles, we will cover major non-US schools.

During your application process, do not overlook these fellowships. Many schools usually require one extra essay or interview to be eligible for a two-year, full-tuition fellowship. The list of fellowships at the schools below may surprise you.

University of Chicago

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 11

Average class size for full-time MBA program:  550

How to apply: Most admitted applicants are automatically considered at the time of the application, but many have additional required interviews as part of the final selection process. All of the fellowships have a mentoring component.

Columbia

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: About 25

Average class size: 1,196

How to apply: Automatically considered with application

Harvard

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 25

Average class size: 918

How to apply: Scholarships are awarded based on financial need. To apply, complete and submit a financial aid application upon admission

California Berkeley Haas

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 14

Average class size: 250

How to apply: For most of the fellowships, students automatically quality with application. For one particular fellowship, an additional essay is required.

MIT Sloan

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 10-12

Average class size: 375

How to apply: Automatic consideration with application

Pennsylvania Wharton

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 10

Average class size: 825

How to apply: Selection is based on the a number of criteria such as personal background, leadership, and integrity. Students who fit the criteria must complete a separate financial aid form.

Virginia Darden

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 61

Average class size: 632

How to apply: All admitted applicants are considered. For one fellowship, a separate application is required

Yale

Number of fellowships awarded to 2008 entering class: 11

Average class size: 180

How to apply: All applicants are considered for merit scholarships

The bottom line is that it is definitely worthwhile to perhaps write an extra essay if it means earning a savings of $200,000 for your education. For many of the fellowships, all admitted applicants qualify.

For a list of more business schools that offer full-tuition fellowships, please refer to this insightful article in BusinessWeek.

According to a recent BusinessWeek Online article, Columbia Business School is making changes that will cut down the length and number of required courses while making changes to its electives system. Such adjustments will allow students to take courses that are based on their career interests. Some highlights include “Power and Influence” as well as “Strategy, Structure and Incentives.”

Columbia’s reason for making these changes is threefold:

• Columbia continually updates its curriculum every few years to stay up to date with current trends.

• The school wants to provide flexibility for students. Since many students after their first year get a summer internship, those students may want to tailor some of their foundational knowledge to what they plan on doing in their internship.

• Columbia wants to ensure that the knowledge students have from business school is practically relevant to the business community after graduation.

An important aspect of the experience at Columbia is the “Cluster” system. A cluster is a group of about 60 students that take their foundational courses together. One of the changes Columbia has in store for the incoming class is that there will be 2.5 fewer core courses, meaning somewhat less time being spent in one’s cluster. Such is an example of the many considerations a school has to make when updating a curriculum: How can Columbia introduce new flexibility while retaining the bonding experience that is offered by the cluster?

Much of these changes come in the face of some criticism of the relevance of the MBA degree. While the relevance is undergoing questioning from critics and journalists, the overwhelming number of MBA applicants around the world shows that the degree is still in high demand. The challenge for Columbia and some other schools we plan on covering is how to make the degree academically rigorous while being overtly applicable to real world business challenges students will face in their careers.

Trends in Curricula

So far a few the institutions we have looked at have similar emphases in their curriculum updating activities:

- Striving for increased “relevance” of a degree

- Offering a more practical approach to learning management

- Making their programs more globally sound, and

- More flexibility in their programs.

We will most likely see these trends crop up in our continued examination of curricula changes at top MBA programs.

Deeper, Smaller, Broader

So what are those key improvements? In a nutshell, MBA curriculums have been remodeled in 4 major aspects:

1.) Content – More real-world relevant courses, more interdisciplinary courses (such as legal and international relations courses), and more collaborative effort – Harvard Business School, for example, offers the opportunity to cross-register for courses in other select graduate programs. So do many other top business schools. More extra-curricular lectures from business professionals and on-site projects with corporations or governments.

2.) Configuration – Broader spectrum of electives allow you to construct your own study program and make your B-school academic experience unique. The weight of core courses as requirements for the degree is lowering. Many core courses are also offered in half-semesters to let you take many different courses within a semester’s time. For example, about half of Columbia Business School’s core courses are half-semester.

3.) Delivery – More high-tech equipped classrooms with more frequent use of the Internet. Smaller class sizes. Classes are taught in seminars that maximize active participation and deeper intellectual involvement. More courses are taught by two or more faculty members as a team.More interaction with faculty advisors. For example, at Stanford Graduate School of Business, your faculty advisor partners with you to select the courses that fit with your personal background and interests.

4.) Format – New curriculum models. For example, Yale’s MBA program did away with the traditional self-contained subject courses such as marketing, finance, and organizational behavior. Instead it starts to offer an Integrated Leadership Perspective course focusing on managing internal and external parties such as all levels of employees, customers, competitors, and investors. The goal is to tie together all that students learned in the first year in a holistic manner.

What prompted these changes?

Many top-rated business schools had not developed new MBA programs in nearly 30 years. Why all the changes now?The major reason for the changes is one framework of business education simply won’t work anymore. Interdisciplinary studies and experience-based learning foster the kind of creativity, leadership, problem-solving skills, critical and independent thinking, business ethics, and cultural sensitivity necessary to succeed in real-world business.

The impact of the dot-com era and an increasingly dynamic, global economy are two main catalysts for curriculum changes. MBA programs now incorporate more courses specifically geared toward e-commerce, digital media, and information technology. Programs also look beyond textbooks to incorporate more interactive learning into the classroom. The growing significance of communication in a global context also translates into a stronger emphasis on foreign language study and traveling abroad within MBA curriculum.

Finally, many top business schools have changed due to new dean and program director appointments in the past few years. These new personnel bring years of experiences, fresh perspectives, and great initiatives to instill new energy into well-established institutions in a competitive and adaptive MBA education world.

What Is Required of the Schools?

To take the program to the next level, those schools need significant funding from their respective parent institutions to support new facility, new equipment, increase in faculty and more. Both Stanford and Columbia are in the midst of expanding their business school campuses.As we can see, a lot of more work is ahead for all the top institutions. To educate next century’s business leaders, all the business schools need to stay at the forefront of the changes.