Courtney Keene at Tepper's International Day celebration

Accepted.com is continuing a blog series featuring interviews with current MBA students, offering readers a behind-the-scenes look at top MBA programs. We hope to offer you a candid picture of student life, and what you should consider as you prepare your MBA application.

Here’s a talk with Courtney Keene, a student at CMU’s Tepper and Heinz who will be working at Deloitte Consulting next year. Thank you Courtney for sharing your thoughts with us!

Accepted: First, can you tell us a little about yourself – where are you from? What and where did you study as an undergraduate and when did you graduate?

Courtney: I’m originally from Washington, D.C., but I can’t really claim it as my ‘hometown’ as I spent most of my childhood and teenage years overseas in West Africa and South East Asia due to my parents’ careers. If anywhere, I’d say my real hometown is Dakar, Senegal, where I’ve spent the most time in any single place and where my husband is from. Although I would go to D.C. and New York during summers to visit family and friends, moving to New York to attend Barnard College in 2003 was my first time actually living in the U.S. since the age of two. At Barnard, which is a small liberal arts college for women at Columbia University, I majored in Political Science and did a minor in Environmental Science. I graduated in 2007.

Accepted: Why did you decide to pursue a combined MBA/MPP? How will these degrees contribute to your career goals?

Courtney: I’m a bit of an atypical MBA candidate, although I think the path I’ve taken is becoming increasingly popular. Before coming back to school I worked in the non-profit world and focused on social innovation and international education. My overarching passion, in line with my upbringing, is the challenge of economic development in emerging markets. I decided to ‘switch sides’ so to speak to address this challenge from the private sector. I figured the best way to obtain the requisite analytical skills and experience would be to pursue an MBA while enriching my knowledge and policy skills with a Master in Public Policy and Management (MSPPM). The two programs complement each other very well and I expect the two perspectives to be useful, especially considering the growing prevalence of public and private sector collaboration in the overlapping fields of economic development and social innovation.

Accepted: Which other programs were you considering in addition to CMU? What tipped the scales to favor Tepper/Heinz?

Courtney: I applied to a short list of schools via the Consortium’s common application. My goal was to either find an MBA program that was very interdisciplinary with strong social entrepreneurship and international development programs and opportunities, or to find a university with a dual degree option with two highly ranked programs featuring these elements. Ultimately I decided on CMU’s Tepper and Heinz schools for several reasons: they are both highly ranked; Tepper has a small and quantitatively-rigorous program, which is what I was looking for; every interaction with admissions staff, students and alumni was positive; their financial aid support is outstanding; and culturally they were the best fit.

Accepted: What are some of your favorite things about living in Pittsburgh? Least favorite?

Courtney: Pittsburgh has a special energy and pride that has pleasantly surprised me since my arrival. It’s a town known for its great decline from the steel empire it once was, but it is in the process of remaking itself, which I’ve found fascinating to witness and be a part of. I’ve enjoyed learning about the economic development efforts here through my Heinz coursework as well as my volunteer internship with a local community development non-profit, GTECH. I’ve also really grown to enjoy the charm of Pittsburgh as an old post-industrial city, home of the Steelers, and a place where most people say hi on the street. Two things I won’t miss: the long waits for the bus and the unpredictable weather.

Accepted: What’s your favorite class so far?

Courtney: Last fall for my Tepper Capstone requirement I took a class called ‘Managing the Enterprises of the Future.’ The course consisted of a series of lectures by very distinguished C-Suite guest speakers and a real-life semester long consulting project with corporate clients. I had the opportunity to work with Walgreens on creating a spin-off non-profit web platform for helping corporate clients, like Walgreens, hire people with disabilities. It was an invaluable learning experience to have an actual client, a real project and an interdisciplinary team of eight to work with over a period of four months to deliver tangible results.

Accepted: Do you have a job lined up for next year? If so, what role did CMU play in helping you secure that position?

Courtney: Next fall I will start at Deloitte Consulting full-time in the Federal Practice in Washington, D.C. I had the great opportunity to intern there last summer, a position I got through CMU’s on-campus recruiting and networking. Both Tepper and Heinz were great resources in the internship search and preparation process.

Accepted: Do you have any advice for some of our applicants who will be applying to CMU’s MBA and/or MPP programs?

Courtney: I found that the application process for graduate school elicited a lot more authentic soul searching than what I remember from college application essays. This time I was sincerely asking myself ‘why do I want to do this?” and trying to answer as honestly as possible both to myself and to the schools to which I was applying. Looking back, I think this helped me a lot not only in terms of the quality of my applications, but also in the quality of my experience in both graduate programs. My words of advice: be flexible, but have some internal compass guiding your decisions.

Accepted: As someone who majored in Political Science and Environmental Studies, rather than something more “business-y” like Economics or Accounting, did you find it hard to adapt or keep up with the quant classes at first? And what about your GMAT — did you find the quant sections much more challenging than the verbal parts?

Courtney: One of the features that tipped the scales in favor of both Tepper and Heinz is their focus on quantitative analysis, a skill-set lacking from my political science liberal arts background. I found the verbal part of the GMAT pretty easy, but was intimidated by the quant section. So yes, the first semester of core classes at Tepper was pretty brutal, but it was a welcomed challenge that I sought out for myself. Fortunately, Tepper has a very supportive and collaborative culture and all of my more experienced peers were willing to help.

Accepted: What attracted you to the Consortium? How have you benefited from the program?

Courtney: I first heard about the Consortium from my aunt, who is a Consortium alumna. Once I knew about it, the value proposition was a no-brainer. It’s an organization with a mission to increase diversity in MBA programs and the business world in general, a mission that aligns well with my own values and goals. I’ve benefited from my affiliation with the Consortium in so many ways: I saved money applying to schools via the common application; I’ve saved a lot of money attending business school due to the Consortium’s financial support; I networked and interviewed with companies at the Consortium’s Orientation Program in June before even beginning my program; I bonded with a network of fellow Consortium students at school; I’ve taken advantage of the extensive alumni network; and I’ve gained on-campus leadership experience as a Tepper Consortium Liaison.

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For help with your Tepper and Consortium application, consider a Tepper School of Business Essay Package or a Consortium Essay Package.

For complete, soup-to-nuts guidance on the MBA admissions process, please purchase Linda Abraham’s new book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools – now available in paperback and Kindle editions!

New curriculum debuts at CMU Tepper

The business world is evolving, and in response, the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon has announced various changes to its MBA curriculum. These reforms reflect the increasing importance of integrated reasoning as evidenced by the new “integrated reasoning” section on the GMAT, as well as the earlier and earlier recruiting schedule for first-year MBAs.

The Tepper curriculum will now begin with BaseCamp, a four-week orientation program “during which students receive an integrated view of business, with an emphasis on how core disciplines and business functions work together.” Giving the students a solid introduction assists them when dealing with internship recruiters early in their first year, as does Tepper’s new class schedule. Students will focus on business fundamentals in the first year, moving on to electives and capstone courses in the second year. Tepper’s goal is to provide its students with a grasp of “key content” in time for internship interviews in December.

Another change to the curriculum will be four individual weeks, each mid-semester, which will be “designed and timed to address a specific need in the development of MBA students, such as leadership development, job searching, or experiential learning,” a.k.a “soft skills.” Plus, new students in the fall of 2012 will partake in a personalized assessment of their leadership skills. The assessment will be conducted by the school’s new co-curricular center for communication and leadership, which will help students “implement personalized plans for developing their oral and written communications and leadership skills throughout the program.”

That’s the news about CMU Tepper. Let’s put its new curriculum in context. Two trends seem to be at play as MBA curricula evolve and schools fall into two broad camps:

1. Start by providing a solid general management curriculum followed by electives. Clearly, this is the camp that CMU Tepper is joining. A few other examples are Harvard, Stanford, Darden, and Tuck.
2. The other camp allows for greater customization from the get-go. For example, with UCLA Anderson’s new curriculum, announced last summer, students can take the core classes when it best suits them. They are actually encouraged to dive immediately into the courses of most value to them given their internship goals. Wharton also recently introduced a similar approach. Chicago has few required courses and is very flexible in terms of when you take those required core courses.

All schools are working to improve their curricula in leadership, communications, and career management/job search skills. Changes in these areas appear to be a constant whether the curriculum goes from the general to the particular or the other way around.

Implications for Your MBA Application

Clearly, MBAs are not one-size-fits-all. And the options and choices mean you have to choose the program that fits you best. As usual, start with your goals. What do you want to get out of the MBA?

If you have a very specific career goal where you want to dive deep into a particular area of study and obtain an internship in that function/industry to facilitate a career change, then Approach #2 is probably superior. You will still get the general management education and learn about other areas of business, but you will be able to shape your studies to suit your needs. The more flexible programs will probably better prepare you for your internship, smoothing your way to an effective career change.

If, however, you come from a liberal arts background or, conversely, come from a highly technical background, and you want a strong foundation in business and general management to pursue a career in management, entrepreneurship, or strategy consulting that will complement your previous education, then a program emphasizing the connections between business functions and suffused with an integrated approach to management education is probably better for you.

As an MBA admissions consultant who has been living and breathing MBA admissions and advising applicants for 18 years, I can also think of exceptions to the general guidelines I just provided even as I type them, but two conclusions apply to all:

1. Let your MBA goals guide you. That means you need to have them.
2. In choosing schools, look at the curricula and understand the differences. The things they all have in common don’t really matter; it’s the differences that count.

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new, definitive book on MBA admissions, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.  

Like Linda’s perspective? You can either search the 2000+ pages of Accepted.com for more, or check out her comprehensive guide to MBA admissions in a succinct, informative 191-page book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools, available in paperback and for Kindle. Download the free first chapter below! It’s an essential guide if you are applying to top MBA programs.

Take this as a warning, applicants. It isn’t good enough to submit strong essays revealing a pattern of success in your career and community. These will earn you an interview, but the interview is not just a conversation to weed out non-fluent, shy, or aggressive applicants: it is one of the most heavily weighted elements of the application.

Many applicants think that they interview well and do not believe that they need to conduct much interview preparation. Think again…

Just check out the statistics: BusinessWeek reports that 50% of Ross applicants were interviewed last year, but only 32% were accepted. Crunching the numbers using the total 2929 applications that Ross received shows that a full 36% of those interviewed were rejected.

And how do these numbers compare to other top programs? At MIT, 38% of those interviewed were rejected. McCombs dinged a full 51% of those interviewed. Duke decided against a whopping 53% of those it interviewed. And Carnegie Mellon rejected 62% of the students it interviewed!

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that you interview well: job interviews and admissions interviews are separate species. Take these numbers seriously and conduct a mock interview with an experienced admissions consultant who can guide you in demonstrating the interpersonal qualities that Ms. Koh and her fellow gatekeepers seek in their students.

Jennifer Bloom has been conducting mock interviews with applicants since 1998 to help them prepare for this overlooked but essential element of every application.  

Consortium students at CMU Tepper

Thank you for attending our recent Consortium Strategy Q&As with Travis McAllister and the reps from participating Consortium schools UT McCombs, University of Wisconsin, UC Berkeley Haas, Yale SOM, Michigan Ross, CMU Tepper, Indiana Kelley, and Rochester Simon. The school adcom representatives each talked about what’s new at their schools and how their programs view Consortium applicants.

Here’s an excerpt that covers some info on Consortium member perks:

Linda Abraham: Maria asks is, “What is the most valuable aspect of being a member of the Consortium?”

Robyn Winstanley: One of the most beneficial aspects is that it does allow you the opportunity to create a whole additional funnel of corporate sponsors and relationships that you can develop for your future career goals. So within each business school that you ultimately choose to attend, of course you can work through the Career Management Center and then networking opportunities available through the alums of that particular business schools, but being part of the Consortium will also provide you an additional set of organizations that can be very useful to you, depending on what your future career goals are….

Obviously another large benefit is financially. We certainly encourage all students who believe that they can fulfill the values and mission of the Consortium absolutely to apply, as we’ve already mentioned the ability to receive a full-tuition fellowship….So a combination of both networking opportunities and the financial advantages are the two key things that I personally would highlight.

Jim Holmen: [R]emember that the Consortium has been around nearly 45 years. So when you join any Consortium member school, you become a member of their family of alums, but you are also part of the family of the Consortium alumni from all the member schools, and that significantly increases the pool of candidates that will be a part of your network of friends and colleagues.

Linwood Harris: I wanted to add the fabulous experience that students will actually gain by attending the Orientation program….You will get an opportunity to set your future career path on fire. And it’s a great way to connect with 300-400 students who are actually in the same shoes as you are, coming into this incoming class….Many of the students who actually come to campus in the fall, by attending that orientation program, they’ve already received some interviews and some great offers for internship before they even step foot into any class because of their relationship of being involved in the Consortium.

For the entire conversation, please view the transcript or listen to the audio file on our website. (This excerpt is from the second Consortium Q&A event we held. Here’s the link to the first.) You can also read up on Consortium-related news and advice by visiting the Consortium Zone.

To automatically receive notices about these MBA admissions chats and other MBA admissions events, please subscribe to our MBA event list. To listen to the Q&A recordings on-the-go, please subscribe to the Accepted Admissions Podcast.

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Poets and Quants (“GMAT Scores Slip At Many Top Schools”) did an analysis of the median GMAT score at the top 25 US business schools and discovered that median scores are slowly dropping. MIT Sloan, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Carnegie-Mellon’s Tepper School, North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School all reported a 10-point drop in their median GMAT scores.

Poets and Quants analysis also reveals that a larger percentage of students were accepted to some b-schools this year than in 2010. USC’s Marshall School accepted 38% of applicants, in comparison with 22% last year, Georgetown’s McDonough School accepted 49% of its applicants, up from 42% last year, and Michigan’s Ross School accepted 32% of its applicants, up from 25% last year.

Implications for MBA applicants:

This is an excellent year to apply to business school.

While you still can’t slap together a mediocre application and expect to get accepted to a top-tier MBA program, if you know why you want an MBA and where you would like to get it, now is the time to apply. If you are competitive at your target schools, invest the time in your MBA essays, work with your recommenders, and submit for the round 2 deadlines.

You may also want to apply to an additional “reach” school or two. However, don’t get too cocky. This data does not imply that all your target programs should be “reaches” or that the GMAT no longer matters.

There is just a little less competition to enter the MBA class of 2014, especially for those not coming from super-competitive cohorts in the applicant pool.

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• Tepper Takes New Path- The Wall Street Journal interviews Robert Dammon, recently appointed dean of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, about the school’s new curriculum that begins next fall. Tepper will no longer just be known for teaching quantitative skills, but will also focus on leadership training and writing, as well as teaching finance and operations. Dammon also tells WSJ that the MBA program plans on expanding its class size by 50% in coming years.

• A PhD Shortage Can be a Good Thing- BizEd looks at how the changing nature of faculty at business schools has affected MBA education. While the number of academically qualified faculty has increased with Ph.D. numbers doubling in the past decade, so has the number of MBA students. As a result, there are more professionals than academics in the classroom—and this is a good thing according to the article. The faculty members that are professionals rather than academics bring “creative curricula and pedagogical innovations that are more market-focused, career-oriented, technologically supported, and globally immersive.”

• AACSB Takes on India- The Financial Times announces that The Indian School of Business is the first business school in India to be accredited by the AACSB (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business). Equis, the European equivalent of the American AACSB, has already accredited two business schools in India.

• MBA Gets Paid $675K…To Start!- Poets and Quants looks at the average salary  of this year’s graduating MBA class. While the highest paying graduate was from Stanford Graduate School of Business and pulled in $675,000, that individual is the exception.  Private equity firms and hedge funds usually hire the highest paid graduates, but the average starting salary is closer to $150,000 for a Stanford graduate. Not too shabby.

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

Look no further – the MBA book of all books is here, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools, written by Accepted.com founder, Linda Abraham, and editor Judy Gruen. And now, for a very limited time only (Monday, Dec. 5 – Tuesday, Dec. 6) you can purchase this must-have book for $10 OFF the cover price by using coupon code SMARTIES at checkout. That’s almost 2/3 off the list price!

In MBA Admission for Smarties you will learn how to:

• Determine “fit” with a program.
• Establish your post-MBA goals and present them in a compelling goals essay.
• Write dazzling, memorable application essays.
• Secure winning letters of recommendation.
• Optimize your MBA application resume.

…and much, much more!

So what are you waiting for?

Be smart. Buy MBA Admission for Smarties now!

(Non-U.S. residents should buy MBA Admission for Smarties from Amazon.com where international shipping is available. Sorry – no coupon available to ship outside the U.S.)

Accepted.com ~ Helping You Write Your Best

ESSAY A. What are your short-term and long-term goals? How will a Tepper MBA help you to achieve these goals? (Please include any information regarding what steps you have taken to learn more about the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.) (Suggested length – 2 double-spaced pages.)

Straight-forward MBA goals question. What do you want to do immediately after earning your MBA? What do you want to do 5-10 years down the road? Yes your longer term goals can be fuzzier, but you should be able to show clear direction. Be sure to include in your response how Tepper’s program (not ranking, reputation, or other generalities that apply to all top programs) will help you achieve your goals.

As you do your research, attend info sessions, and visit campuses, look for the distinctive pieces to any MBA program that appeal to you. Then use that data to demonstrate how well you know the program and what a great fit you are for the given school.

Regarding CMU, you may want to refer to its mini-semester structure or its MBA tracks and cross-campus curriculum. Explain how any or all of these elements will help you achieve your goal. If Tepper professors are prominent in your area of interest, discuss how their research jives with your professional interests. Your ability to connect these details and your goals builds a stellar goals essay.

ESSAY B. The Tepper School is looking for individuals who will make an impact. Give an example of a time where you made an impact in your professional or academic life. (Suggested length – 2 double-spaced pages.)

In this MBA essay, show how you have contributed actively in the past to your team at work or perhaps a group project in class. Did your suggestion enable the team to finish the project on time? Did you inspire and unite your teammates and lead them to unprecedented victory in the academic decathlon?  Please note that Tepper is looking for an example, not a theoretical treatise. Stories work well for this (and many other ) kinds of questions.

ESSAY C. Please answer one of the following two questions. Please clearly specify which question you are answering. (Suggested length – 1 double-spaced page.)

1. Describe an obstacle you have faced in your professional or academic life. How did you overcome this obstacle and how did it foster your development?

2. Describe a time in your professional or academic life in which your ethics were challenged. How did you deal with the situation and what did you learn from it?

Choose the question that enables you to present yourself at your best. For more on this topic, please see “MBA Essays: You’ve Got Options!” Again, both these questions are looking for an example, “a time,” an obstacle. They don’t want all the times, examples, or obstacles. Just one. And only from your professional or academic life.

ESSAY D. Please answer one of the following two questions. Please clearly specify which question you are answering. (Suggested length – 1 double-spaced page.)

1. Outside of my professional and/or academic life, one thing that people would be surprised to know about me is…

2. Outside of my professional and/or academic life, I am especially proud of…

This question is a freebie, a wild card. You can really write about anything non-professional that will give the admissions committee insight into YOU. As it has in the previous essays, Tepper wants you to focus on one aspect of your life, and they clearly want it to be non-professional. It can be fun or serious. My advice is that it should complement the characteristics revealed in the other essay. Where do you break with whatever stereotype is out there about you? That topic might be a great response to D1. When have you contributed and had impact in a non-professional context.

ESSAY E. (Optional Essay) Is there anything else that you think we should know as we evaluate your application? Note: If you believe your credentials and essays represent you fairly, you should not feel obligated to answer this question. This essay is intended to provide a place for you to add information that you think is important but is not covered elsewhere in the application. This could include clarification of your employment or academic record, choice of recommenders or provide helpful context for the admissions committee in reviewing your application.

Use this optional essay, or lose an opportunity to provide even more reasons for Tepper to admit you. Just don’t rehash information found elsewhere. That’s a waste of time — yours and your reader’s.

If you would like professional guidance with your CMU Tepper MBA application, please consider Accepted’s MBA essay editing and MBA admissions consulting or our CMU Tepper School Package, which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the Tepper MBA application.

CMU Tepper 2012 MBA Deadlines

*April 23, 2012 deadline is reserved for U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents, as well as FlexTime and FlexMode candidates. International applicants for the FullTime MBA program must apply by March 5, 2012.

**June 01, 2012 deadline and after is reserved for FlexTime and FlexMode candidates only.

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

View the rest of our 2012 MBA Essay Tips for more MBA application essay advice.

BusinessWeek reported some good news for business school students in the article, “MBA Internship Hiring Shows Signs of Life.” MBA internships, which have been harder to come by in recent years due to the recession, are perking back up to their pre-recession vitality.

Some MBA programs are seeing increases in summer internships of 10% or more “as companies seek to refill talent pipelines neglected during the economic downturn.”

A number of top business schools have reported significant increases in their internship hiring, including Northwestern Kellogg, CMU Tepper, Cornell Johnson, and Minnesota Carlson. Carlson reported one of the largest increases, from 35% last year to 57% this year. The only school to report a decline in internship hiring was Georgia Tech’s College of Management, and that was only down one percentage point (from 58% to 57%).

The article, which starts on an optimistic note, stresses that this optimism is of the “cautious variety.” While MBA hiring may be up since the recession hit in 2008, salaries, and especially year-over-year advances, are still not at pre-recession levels.

According to Jim Dixey, director of graduate business career services at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School, “Three years ago, one student with little experience was offered a position with a $129,000 annual salary, while another student, who considered the same position a year later, was offered $20,000 less. Although there is some money available to MBAs, there are fewer opportunities than before.”

Furthermore, recruiters are having trouble committing to hiring because of all the uncertainty in the world. An upcoming presidential election, Middle East uprisings, and the nuclear crisis in Japan, just to name a few, are forcing companies to refrain from heavy hiring.

On the upside, this uncertainty is causing employers to offer full-time positions and internships year-round, rather than in the fall and spring cycles exclusively. It is also encouraging students to play a more proactive role in their job searches. Networking, connecting with career services departments, and adjusting their priorities are all essential steps current MBA students must take if they want to secure jobs or internships.

Fred Staudmyer, Cornell Johnson’s assistant dean for career management, explains, “We have had to teach students to be more aggressive and better promote themselves in the market.”

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Earlier this week, Robert M. (“Bob”) Dammon was appointed dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, reports a recent Tepper press release. The current associate dean of education and professor financial economics will replace former dean Kenneth Dunn.

“We are fortunate to have Bob assume leadership of one of the world’s great business schools,” said Mark S. Kamlet, Tepper’s acting dean since January 1, 2011 when Dunn stepped down. “The analytical approach to solving complex business problems was invented at Carnegie Mellon’s business school and serves as an important framework for business. Our expectation of a leader for the school’s academic and research priorities is extremely high, and Bob’s experience is unmatched. He is an outstanding researcher, exceptional teacher and skillful administrator, and he brings a clear understanding of the complexities and opportunities in management education today.”

Dammon has won numerous teaching awards and has been published in prestigious finance and economic journals. He has been serving on the Tepper faculty for more than 25 years.

Dammon will take his post on May 1, 2011.

For more information, see BusinessWeek‘s article, “Dammon Named Dean at Tepper,” and Poets & Quants’ “Master Teacher New Tepper Dean.”

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