Posted by: Louis Lavelle on February 10, 2012
Even though business school applicants must consider many factors when deciding which MBA program to attend, they sometimes have no choice but to consider practical matters, such as money, first. Recently, Eric23, a participant in the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Forums, compared financial aid awards received from the University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business and the George Washington University School of Business to determine where to enroll. Others joined in the conversation and offered advice on how to go about making a decision. One person suggested that Eric23 calculate the cost of living, while another advised further research about the programs. What recommendation would you make? Visit the "Choosing schools" discussion thread and share your thoughts.
-Francesca Di Meglio
Editor's Note: This blog post is part of a series about discussions taking place on the Bloomberg Businessweek Business School Forums where prospective MBA program applicants, current students, and recent alumni trade admissions tips, job-hunting advice, and the occasional barbed comment. We invite you to join these discussions or start one of your own.
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on February 7, 2012
For a certain type of MBA, but certainly not all, the degree is all about landing a job on Wall Street. And not just any job, an investment banking job, the kind that promises untold riches--a lifetime of high six-figure salaries and bonuses to match.
But that kind of job is rapidly disappearing. UBS, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Credit Suisse have all announced massive pay cuts for investment bankers in recent weeks, and many of the same institutions have also reported job cuts. In fact the global financial services industry is hemorrhaging jobs of all sorts, not just investment banking, with the total now somewhere north of 200,000 in the latest purge. For a withering view of life among the Masters of the Universe these days--and a good explanation for why lower pay may be a semi-permanent condition--check out this week's New York magazine cover story, "The Emasculation of Wall Street." If you're contemplating a banking career, or already have one, it will give you second thoughts.
These banks are big employers of MBAs, or at least they were. At Chicago's Booth School of Business and Wharton, big banks hired nearly 70 full-time MBAs at graduation; at Columbia, in Wall Street's backyard, the number approached 100.
Continue reading "Wall Street: Is the Party Over for MBAs?"
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on February 6, 2012
Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management today will be announcing a new strategic plan for the highly ranked b-school that includes some of the most sweeping changes since the school was founded more than a century ago.
Many details are not yet available, but here's what we know based on an interview with Kellogg Dean Sally Blount, who took the position in July 2010 and for nine months has been developing, in conjunction with faculty, a strategic plan designed to take the venerable institution into the 21st century. We'll update this post with a link to the announcement as soon as one becomes available.
The changes Blount has in store for Kellogg are premised on her belief that the world has shifted in fundamental ways that make "business as usual" no longer tenable for b-schools. World events, including the global economic crisis and the Lehman Brothers collapse, have changed the market for the traditional MBA, and not for the better, she says.
"Demand for the two-year MBA is slowing. One-year and alternative masters degrees are a reality. And people in their 20s are going to live so much longer than their grandparents, yet they perceive they have so little time for education," Blount said. "The world has changed and we're never going back. Our goal is to truly internalize that."
So what does Blount have in mind? Nothing less than a radical overhaul:
Continue reading "Kellogg Overhaul Will Shrink MBA, Revise Curriculum"
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on February 3, 2012
What insight do Super Bowl ads really give us into the vision or longevity of a company?
More than we may think, according to Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Take Apple, for example.
The company introduced its personal computer during a 1984 Super Bowl commercial that evoked epic science-fiction films. Ridley Scott, who had gained notoriety for directing Alien and Blade Runner, directed the Apple ad. The commercial intentionally referenced George Orwell's novel, 1984. It never showed the computer.
"A very frightened (Apple) board of directors said 'this is stupid! The whole company is riding on this computer and you're going to spend all this money on a commercial that doesn't even show it? Pull out of the Super Bowl,'" says Lee Clow, global director of media arts at TBWA Worldwide, the agency that created the ad, in the 2009 documentary Art & Copy.
"And then," Clow continues, "[Steve] Jobs and [Steve] Wozniak looked at each other and said, 'well, I'll pay for half of [the commercial] if you will."
Clow's anecdote may seem telling now, as Apple recently surpassed Exxon Mobil to become the world's most valuable company based on market capitalization.
Professors and students at Kellogg and Wharton will be looking for similar insights during commercial breaks this Sunday as the New York Giants play the New England Patriots.
Kellogg is in its eighth year running the Super Bowl Advertising Review, where a panel of MBA students grades each commercial on a set of criteria and tabulates the data.
The metrics answer the questions "Are (the ads) going to be effective? And, are they going to improve the advertiser's bottom line?" says a Kellogg MBA in a video about the project.
Wharton will host a similar forum over Twitter using the hashtag #whartonfoa (FOA is an acronym for Wharton Future of Advertising). The school's marketing professors and industry executives such as Ogilvy & Mather's Chief Digital Officer Brandon Berger will tweet their impressions using the hashtag throughout the game. The group will post its analysis of the ads at www.myfoa.net on Monday, Feb. 6.
--Erin Zlomek
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on February 2, 2012
The number of MBA applicants at UCLA's Anderson School of Management that have been rejected because of plagiarism has grown exponentially, with 40 more rejected in the second round of applications.
The new cases of plagiarism bring the total to 52. As we reported yesterday, 12 cases of plagiarism were discovered in a batch of 870 first-round applications. An additional 40 cases were discovered in the applications submitted for the second-round, says Elise Anderson, a spokeswoman for the school. The third round, which has an April 18 deadline, typically gets another 500 to 700 applications, Anderson says. So it's possible that more plagiarized essays will be found in the third round.
The plagiarism was discovered through the use of a service called Turnitin for Admissions, which scans admissions essays looking for text that matches any documents in the Turnitin database. The archive contains billions of pages of web content, books and journals, as well as student work previously submitted to Turnitin for a plagiarism check. Turnitin flags any matches it finds, but individual schools determine if the similarity constitutes plagiarism. The service is now in use by nearly 20 business schools, including those at Penn State, Iowa State, Northeastern, and Wake Forest.
Continue reading "UCLA MBA Applicants Rejected for Plagiarism Totals 52"
