CBS’s short-answer questions and essays are designed to help the adcom understand your career goals, your record of impact, and the contributions you plan to make to your MBA community.   

CBS August-Entry Essays

Short Answer Question 1

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum)

Being specific and succinct is the key to responding to this prompt. Note that it has a character (rather than word) limit. Clearly state the industry and functional role you are interested in. Also, make sure that this response serves as a starting point for your Essay 1. 

Short Answer Question 2

How do you plan to spend the summer after the first year of the MBA? If in an internship, please include target industry (industries) and/or function (functions). If you plan to work on your own venture, please indicate a focus of business. (50 characters maximum)

With this question, CBS wants to know that you understand your target industry and that you’re familiar with summer options that can be a bridge to your first post-graduation job/venture. So, building on your response to Short Answer Question 1, what summer position would provide a next step toward achieving your post-MBA goals? Make sure that your answers to both of these prompts are aligned. For example, if your post-MBA goal is to work in investment banking in New York City, it wouldn’t make sense to state that you want to work for a tech start-up in the Bay Area for your internship, even if you think it would be an interesting opportunity. Your internship is a meaningful part of successfully obtaining your post-MBA goals.

Research possible summer internship placements using the most recent CBS employment report. As the question clearly requests, spell out your target industry and function. You might not want to name a specific company, given that hiring trends can change between when you submit your application and recruiting season, but show in the way that you phrase your goal that you have a strong grasp on what companies hire summer interns in your intended industry, and for what functions. 

If you intend to pursue an entrepreneurial venture, consider the CBS resources that can support you over the summer, such as Summer Startup Track and the Summer Fellowship Program.

CBS January-Entry Essays

Short Answer Question 1

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum)

This question is the same as the one for August-entry applicants. Again, being specific and succinct is the key to responding to this prompt. And remember that it has a character (rather than word) limit. Clearly state the industry and functional role you are interested in. Also, make sure that this response serves as a starting point for your Essay 1.

Short Answer Question 2:

Why do you prefer the January-entry term? (50 characters maximum)

J-term applicants must convey why a summer internship is unnecessary. For example, you might be joining your family business, pursuing entrepreneurship, or being sponsored by (and therefore returning to) your current employer.

Essay 1

Through your resume and recommendation, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years and what is your long-term dream job? (500 words)

Using your response to the school’s short-answer questions as your starting point, you want to convey to the adcom that you have thoroughly mapped out your career path from your stated post-MBA goal to your long-term, greater aspiration. Avoid recapping your professional experience – CBS is not looking for that information in this essay. 

Open with a brief story that conveys your motivation for your goals, whether that is a meaningful experience you had or some other type of context that helps the reader understand what drives you toward this career.

Notice that the end of the prompt specifically asks about your “dream” job, which invites an aspirational response. Importantly, however, you need to paint a clear picture of the path required to achieve your vision, starting with your immediate post-MBA goal and the progression you hope to make over the three to five years that follow. What professional stepping stones will position you to achieve your long-term goals? Think of your dream job as a reference point on the horizon that will guide your next steps. 

Finally, consider the skills required for this career path. Identify the skills you already possess, those you need to strengthen, and those you need to build via the MBA experience and the next three to five years to set you on the path to achieving your vision.       

Essay 2 

Please share a specific example of how you made a team more collaborative, more inclusive or fostered a greater sense of community within an organization. (250 words)

At first, writing a 250-word essay might seem easier than drafting a longer response. In reality, however, it can be more challenging because you must meaningfully convey the impact you had in a rather limited space. Via this essay, the CBS adcom seeks to understand how you will contribute to the school’s collaborative and inclusive culture. 

The example you share can be either professional or personal. What matters most is that the story demonstrates how you positively influenced a group dynamic and strengthened a sense of community.

Approach this essay using the CAR (Context, Action, and Results) framework. Given the tight word limit, provide just enough context for the reader to understand the situation. Spend the majority of your essay describing the actions you took and explaining why you believed they were the best approach. Finally, present the outcome of your actions and how individuals, a team, or the broader community was positively affected.

Essay 3

We believe Columbia Business School is a special place with a collaborative learning environment in which students feel a sense of belonging, agency, and partnership–academically, culturally, and professionally.

How would you co-create your optimal MBA experience at CBS? Please be specific. (250 words)

This essay is about fit with CBS and ownership of the MBA experience. First, consider what you have learned about CBS and its culture. Identify areas that align with your personal and professional interests and explain how they support your career goals. You could also highlight a student club, course, or experiential learning opportunity that will help you build specific knowledge, skills, and/or relationships you need to achieve your goals.

Secondly, CBS wants students who will take the initiative to create opportunities, build relationships, and shape the MBA experience for themselves and others. Provide examples of how you plan to engage with your classmates and the broader community. Beyond simply listing activities, explain why these opportunities are important to you and how you will make a meaningful contribution. What talents, skills, or ideas will you bring to campus to make the most of your time at CBS, and how will your peers be a part of that story? This essay is an opportunity to demonstrate that you have thoughtfully researched the school, understand the student experience there, and are prepared to actively contribute to the community.

CBS Optional Essay

If you wish to provide further information or additional context around your application to the Admissions Committee, please upload a brief explanation of any areas of concern in your academic record or personal history. This does not need to be a formal essay. You may submit bullet points. (Maximum 500 Words)

This optional essay is an opportunity for you to provide additional context about your candidacy that you were unable to address elsewhere in your application. When deciding whether to include an explanation, consider whether the information addresses a gap, inconsistency, or potential concern in your application. If it doesn’t, it is perfectly acceptable to leave this essay blank.

You might want to address a gap in employment, academic inconsistencies, or any unusual circumstances that have affected some aspect of your candidacy. The goal is to provide clarity, not excuses.

If there is a potentially negative situation or setback for which you want to provide additional context, take ownership of it, explain what you learned, share how you’ve grown since the experience, and outline any steps you’ve taken to ensure that a similar situation won’t occur in the future. 

Also, provide enough detail for clarity, but avoid oversharing or including information that is extremely personal or unrelated to your application. 

Finally, you can also use this essay to share a dimension of your identity, values, or experience that didn’t fit in your other essays but would add depth to your candidacy.

CBS Application Deadlines

January 2027 Entry Application Deadlines

August 2027 Entry Application Deadlines

Source: CBS website

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with CBS directly to verify its essay questions, instructions, and deadlines.***

CBS class profile

Here’s a look at the CBS MBA class entering 2025 (data taken from the CBS website):

Applications received: 7,477

Enrolled: 982

January entry: 224

August entry: 758

Countries represented (by Citizenship): 72

International students: 41%

Minorities of U.S. origin: 48%

Women: 46%

Average GMAT score (10th Edition): 734

GMAT score range (10th Edition): 610-780

Average GMAT score (Focus Edition): 690

GMAT score range (Focus Edition): 615-805

Average GRE Verbal score: 163

GRE Verbal score range: 150-170

Average GRE Quantitative score: 163

GRE Quantitative score range: 150-170

Average GPA: 3.6

Undergraduate major

• Business: 30%
• Economics: 19%
• Engineering: 19%
• Social Sciences: 13%
• Sciences: 8%
• Humanities: 6%
• Technology: 4%
• Other: 2%

Average years of work experience: 5

Previous Industry

• Financial Services: 30%
• Consulting: 23%
• Technology: 12%
• Marketing/Media: 10%
• Other: 8%
• Healthcare: 6%
• Military/Government: 4%
• Nonprofit: 3%
• Real Estate: 3%
• Energy: 2%

Race and Ethnicity (Federal Reporting Guidelines)

• White: 50%
• Asian American: 25%
• Hispanic/Latinx: 12%
• Black/African American: 7%
• Multi-Racial: 3%
• Did Not Report: 2%
• American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander: 0%

Related Resources

• How to Get an MBA at Columbia Business School, podcast Episode 528
• From Example to Exceptional: Crafting Standout Application Essays, a free guide
• Should You Apply to MBA Programs in Round 1 or Round 2?

The post Columbia Business School MBA Essay Tips and Deadlines [2026-2027], Class Profile appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The M7 business schools represent seven distinct, vivid cultures, each with its own history, values, characteristics, opportunities, and challenges.

Of course, there are many commonalities among the M7 schools, as well: all are highly competitive, offer robust academic resources, are supported by a committed and involved alumni network, and attract top-tier recruiters (even in down business cycles). Yet each one also has a unique, strong, and distinctive personality that both reflects and drives its leadership in the MBA realm. These programs have risen to their prominent position because the schools are the leaders in their domain: graduate business education. So, they reasonably expect their students and applicants to have correspondingly high ambitions, but together, they also represent diversity.

In 2026, the M7 schools continue to attract the brightest minds from around the globe, with highly competitive admissions and world-class academic resources. Let’s take a deep dive into these schools and see what they have to offer the next generation of business leaders.

Table of Contents

• Harvard Business School
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• MIT Sloan School of Management
• The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
• Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management
• University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business
• Columbia Business School

What Sets the M7 Business Schools Apart

There are other elite MBA programs, of course, but the M7 schools have an ongoing, shared history; their deans connected with each other years ago and formed a group that meets regularly and shares information. Over time, these meetings have grown to include other individuals within their admissions offices, creating a consistent flow of information across multiple levels. The meetings address a range of issues, including best practices for components of the admissions process and responses to current events that directly affect MBA admissions.

Here are some other characteristics that make the M7 schools stand out:

• Prestige – Each M7 school is globally recognized as a leader in business education.
• Rigorous Academics – From the case method at Harvard Business School to the flexible curriculum at Chicago Booth, the M7 programs provide an intellectually challenging environment.
• Top Recruiters – The M7 schools attract the world’s leading companies across industries, ensuring that students have access to unparalleled career opportunities.
• Global Network – The alumni networks of the M7 schools are vast, influential, and highly supportive, offering lifelong connections.

While the M7 schools share these qualities, what sets them apart is their unique cultures and offerings. Let’s explore each one in more detail.

Harvard Business School, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 685  
• Median GPA: 3.76  
• Acceptance Rate: 11.2%  

Immersion could be the keyword for the Harvard Business School (HBS) experience. The program’s cornerstone is the case-study approach, intertwined with experiential learning; students read a case and then intensively analyze it both before and in class. The aim is to train students in complex, real-world decision-making. Students then have numerous opportunities to sharpen this training through practical application. By continuously engaging with classmates from different functions, industries/sectors, and geographic regions in these case discussions, students radically expand their perspectives, thought processes, and knowledge. This immersive experience is enhanced by the smarts, passion, and ambition of HBS students. Outside of class, these high-achieving, high-energy students participate in many clubs and volunteer activities. The two years of the MBA program reportedly fly by, thanks to the nonstop immersion and engagement.

What HBS Looks for in Applicants 

Given its case method approach, HBS seeks students and future leaders who will carry their weight and contribute fully in the classroom – people who have something to say and the ability to communicate it. Further, students must be able to listen, respond thoughtfully, and adapt to new ideas as the dialogue progresses. Beyond the requisite high level of accomplishment, HBS seeks people who enthusiastically and effectively engage.

Stanford Graduate School of Business, Class of 2027

• Average GMAT: 740  
• Average GPA: 3.76  
• Acceptance Rate: 6.8% 

Nothing less than transformation, that’s what the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is about – both yours and the kind you bring to the organizations and communities you touch. Stanford’s Silicon Valley DNA, highly customizable program, and emphasis on innovation, change, and entrepreneurship shape its MBA experience. It’s a small, elite cohort that goes on an exploratory journey together, and many students emerge in a different place than they expected when they started out. This journey integrates the personal and the professional – in Stanford’s multifaceted pedagogical approach, building business and leadership skills is tied to understanding and defining one’s mission and vision. Beyond the MBA classroom, students learn from and engage with numerous guest speakers who represent the cutting edge of their fields. They are also encouraged to access Stanford’s other top-notch programs, including law, medicine, engineering, the humanities, and the sciences. During the MBA program, students form a robust, mutually supportive network for testing ideas, boundaries, and their own assumptions and inclinations.

What the Stanford GSB Looks for in Applicants

Stanford wants people who will be excellent “fellow travelers,” people who have – and will therefore bring to the program – a unique point of view. The school values risk-takers and change agents. At the same time, these individuals deliberately remain a “work in progress,” always open to new information, ideas, and situations and willing to shift gears accordingly. They relish exploration and collaboration.

MIT Sloan School of Management, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 730  
• Median GPA: 3.69  
• Acceptance Rate: 14.1%

What’s special about the MIT Sloan MBA program is its zeal for tackling large, multifaceted problems. The school’s students learn how to develop robust solutions that can weather uncertainty, ambiguity, and change, and they relish the challenge. The adcom appreciates people who lead organically by drawing others along the journey to solve complex problems. The Sloan MBA approach is rooted in two concepts that intertwine: invention, which entails creativity and agility, and data-driven analysis, which entails rigor and objectivity. These concepts align with MIT more broadly. Just as a robust process involves iteration, this program supports its pedagogy with ongoing experiential learning opportunities (in other words, practice) to reinforce and deepen the learning and ensure that students grasp topics and hone skills in a real-world context. In essence, Sloan MBA graduates are able to see around corners and make constructive use of whatever they encounter. They lead others through the process, driven by their vision and their passion to tackle compelling problems.

What MIT Sloan Looks for in Applicants

MIT Sloan seeks students who are open to following where the data lead, even if doing so contradicts their personal preferences or assumptions. The school is also interested in people who possess both vision and practical skills, who are creative and analytical. That doesn’t mean an applicant must embody these qualities 50/50, but if, for example, a candidate is primarily creative and visionary, they also need to show a record of concrete impact and achievement. Needless to say, curiosity and a collaborative mindset are also sought.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 735  
• Median GPA: 3.7  
• Acceptance Rate: 20.5% 

The Wharton MBA program is big, with almost 900 students per class, multiple opportunities for joint degrees and certificates (from law and veterinary medicine to the MBA/MA Joint Degree in International Studies program with the Lauder Institute and the JD/MBA), more than 20 majors, an extensive range of electives (including courses across the many other campus schools), and clubs in several broad categories: professional, athletic, social and special interest, community service, geographic, and cultural. Yet Wharton does not sacrifice quality for quantity. Its many majors are deep and rigorous. Moreover, the MBA program’s structure – dividing each incoming class into four clusters, each of which is further divided into cohorts of approximately 70 students, and then into diverse five- or six-person Learning Teams – ensures broad exposure and drives dynamism throughout the learning process. What students learn from their teammates and classmates will help them take full advantage of the program’s vast resources. While bigness and abundance characterize this program, Wharton has devised a learning structure that personalizes and optimizes it for students.

What Wharton Looks for in Applicants

Wharton wants applicants who, along with being high performers, are actively engaged in activities and/or interests that contribute somehow. This doesn’t necessarily have to be community service, but it does need to be some form of clear and consistent engagement outside of work that positively affects others. Finally, given Wharton’s extensive opportunities and resources, it is essential that applicants show that they are resourceful; Wharton does not want its abundance squandered.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Class of 2027 

• Median GMAT: 687 
• Median GPA: 3.68  
• Acceptance Rate: 28.6%

Management has long been, and remains, the hallmark of the Kellogg MBA program, a comprehensive discipline grounded in leadership and global perspective. The premise is that, given today’s rapid change and high volatility, strong management capabilities are needed more than ever. Moreover, they can be applied across industries and sectors. Kellogg’s renowned management resources include two management-focused majors, “Management Science” and “Managing Organizations,” along with numerous other traditional majors. To complement these pillars of business training, Kellogg offers innovative “pathways,” which are cross-functional sets of courses that address timely topics, including “Growth and Scaling,” “Data Analytics,” and “Social Impact.” Students can mix and match majors and pathways, benefiting from the accumulated wisdom of the scholars and experts who devised them. Kellogg has innovated in another area as well: It is one of the first top-tier U.S. MBA programs to offer a one-year option (for people with some academic business foundation). Not least, Kellogg is renowned for its abundant global opportunities, in which almost one-half of its students participate.

What Kellogg Looks for in Applicants 

Kellogg greatly values work experience that shows an applicant’s exemplary people skills – including leadership, teamwork, collaboration, and communication – and presents a record of meaningful accomplishment. Because Kellogg’s student body is particularly strong in philanthropic activity, including this element in one’s application is a good way to show fit with the program.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 736  
• Median GPA: 3.6  
• Acceptance Rate: 28.7%

Academic and intellectual rigor combined with curricular flexibility – this intriguing balance is what the Chicago Booth MBA program offers. Intellectual culture is paramount at Chicago Booth, reflecting the character of the broader university to which it belongs. In the Chicago Booth MBA program, ideas are important – having them, sharing them, challenging them, testing them, and acting on them when the time is right. Chicago Booth has unrivaled quantitative depth and analytic rigor among MBA programs. This is a fantastic asset for students who want to refine their strengths in these areas and for those seeking a rock-solid foundation. The school’s flexibility allows students to tailor their learning program to their needs, which puts the onus on students to understand what they need. Although students do not have to select a major, many do, and some even pursue multiple majors. Chicago Booth offers a wide array of options, including both standard choices, such as “Accounting” and “Marketing Strategy,” and less-common ones, such as “Behavioral Science” and “Econometrics and Statistics.”

What Chicago Booth Looks for in Applicants 

Chicago Booth looks for people who have the self-knowledge, critical thinking skills, and resourcefulness to make the most of the MBA program’s flexibility and strengths and to use them productively. And because the school values ideas, it seeks applicants who will go beyond practical career training to explore new topics, areas, and disciplines and who will challenge themselves intellectually.

Columbia Business School, Class of 2027

• Average GMAT Score: 734  
• Median GPA: 3.6  
• Acceptance Rate: 20.9% 

Integral to the Columbia Business School (CBS) MBA program and identity is its New York City (NYC) home, which the CBS website refers to as a top asset of the program. To CBS, this location equals access. To complement the program’s renowned full-time faculty, CBS attracts adjunct professors and speakers who are thought leaders in many areas of business and beyond, because so many either reside in/near NYC or visit frequently. Within this vibrant setting, CBS builds its student community from the start by creating diverse clusters of 60-75 students who take all first-year classes together. CBS’s depth in finance is unique, and the school offers special programs for private equity and value investing. Other highly acclaimed specializations are “Social Enterprise” and “Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management,” the latter strengthened by the plethora of major pharma companies within a couple hours’ drive of campus. The NYC location also reinforces and amplifies the program’s entrepreneurship resources, given the city’s strong tech and fintech ecosystem.

What CBS Looks for in Applicants 

Beyond strong professional and academic track records, CBS wants people who have a plan to take advantage of the school’s resources, engage with the surrounding city and its endless opportunities, and pursue their defined goals. Because it’s easy to fade into the background amid the immensity of NYC and the dynamism of Columbia University, CBS also wants students who can and will forge bonds with their peers.

Key Takeaways on the M7 Business Schools

With their deep resources, commitment to academic rigor, and diverse student communities, the M7 schools provide unparalleled opportunities for MBA students. While each school has its own distinctive culture and specialties, all the M7 programs offer transformative experiences that will shape your future.

As the MBA landscape continues to evolve, the M7 schools will remain at the forefront in developing leaders who can navigate tomorrow’s complex business challenges. If you’re aiming for a career that will have a global impact, one of these seven MBA programs could be the ideal place for you to start your journey.

Related Resources

• Free MBA Admissions Guides
• The Business School Selectivity Index: GMAT Scores, GPAs, and MBA Acceptance Rates
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast

The post M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2026 appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Here’s a look at eight MBA programs with especially strong consulting tracks and impressive placement rates at elite consulting firms.

1. INSEAD

With campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, INSEAD offers a unique global perspective that is highly valued in consulting. The one-year MBA program is intensive, allowing students to quickly transition into the workforce. INSEAD’s strong network with leading consulting firms and its diverse cohort further enhance its standing in the industry. With 55% of the Class of 2024 hired into management consulting, INSEAD is a great option for individuals interested in this career path and looking for a global MBA program. 

2. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Kellogg is renowned for its collaborative culture and strength in marketing and strategy, which are critical in consulting. The school’s emphasis on teamwork and strategic thinking aligns well with the demands of top consulting firms. Kellogg also boasts a robust consulting club and high placement rates at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Of Kellogg’s Class of 2024, a full 35% accepted jobs in the consulting field. 

3. Chicago Booth School of Business

Chicago Booth’s data-driven approach and analytical rigor make it an excellent choice for future consultants. The school’s emphasis on empirical research and quantitative analysis prepares students for the analytical challenges of consulting. Chicago Booth also benefits from a strong consulting club and an extensive alumni network in the industry. With 33.8% of the Class of 2024 entering jobs in consulting, Booth is an excellent program for prospective MBAs interested in this professional path. 

4. MIT Sloan School of Management

MIT Sloan’s focus on innovation and analytical problem-solving makes it a strong contender for aspiring consultants. The school’s curriculum includes a variety of consulting-focused courses, and Sloan’s Action Learning Labs provide hands-on consulting experience. The program’s graduates are well prepared for the strategic and analytical demands of working at the leading consulting firms. Of MIT Sloan’s Class of 2024, 32.1% accepted consulting roles. 

5. Columbia Business School

Columbia Business School’s location in New York City provides students with unparalleled access to major consulting firms. The program offers a strong consulting track and has a high placement rate at top consulting firms. In addition, its connections make it a prime choice for aspiring consultants, as proven by the 30.6% of its Class of 2024 who entered consulting roles. 

6. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Wharton is known for its analytical rigor and strong finance program, which translates well into consulting. The school has a strong track record of placing graduates at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Wharton offers a dedicated consulting major and numerous consulting-focused electives. With 25.2% of its Class of 2024 accepting positions in consulting, Wharton is a great choice for candidates interested in the big three firms. 

7. Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School (HBS) consistently tops the various MBA program rankings and offers a strong pipeline to elite consulting firms. It boasts a robust consulting club, extensive alumni network, and a curriculum that uses the case study method exclusively – an approach that prepares students particularly well for the rigorous problem-solving component of consulting positions by simulating real-world problems. The latest HBS employment report backs this up, revealing that 18.0% of the Class of 2024 entered consulting. 

8. Stanford Graduate School of Business

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) emphasizes leadership and innovation, which are highly valued in consulting roles. The program’s smaller class size ensures that students receive personalized attention and forge strong relationships with faculty, which can be beneficial in securing career placements in consulting. In 2024, the GSB saw 14% of its graduates go into the consulting field. 

For aspiring MBAs who aim to break into elite consulting firms, an MBA from a top business school can be a powerful springboard. The leading programs offer unparalleled recruiting access, consulting-focused resources, and strong alumni connections, while equipping students with the analytical, strategic, and leadership skills needed to thrive in the industry. Ultimately, choosing the right MBA program means weighing each one’s consulting track record, resources, and network against your personal career ambitions.

Related Resources

• How to Write a Winning MBA Goals Essay: Tips to Clarify and Communicate Your Career Vision
• MBA Admissions Advice for Career Changers
• When the MBA Optional Essay Is No Longer Optional

The post Top MBA Programs for Consulting Careers appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

For many business degree hopefuls, the MBA remains the gold standard of graduate management education, and not without reason – an MBA can be the start of a new chapter in your life. Professionally, it can help you accelerate your career or make a career pivot. Academically, it can help fill gaps in hard and soft skills. Personally, it can help you discover more about yourself. For these reasons, many cite their MBA experience as being transformative. 

An MBA is the goal for many people who aim to pursue a business career. But what about individuals who have the desire to pursue graduate management study and start making their mark in the business world but don’t meet the work experience requirement of most MBA programs? Is gaining acceptance to business school without work experience possible? The short answer is yes, it is! The two most common paths for candidates in this situation are pre-experience master’s programs and deferred MBA programs.

Pre-experience/Early Career Programs

The terms “pre-experience” and “early career” are used interchangeably, but they both refer to programs that cater to recent graduates (“recent” meaning fewer than three years out of college). While the first offering in this category was the general management MiM (master’s in management) degree, the portfolio of programs now includes master’s degrees in finance, innovation and entrepreneurship, and data analytics, to name but a few options you might find at business schools today. Business master’s (BMs) degrees in data science, accounting, finance, and health administration are generally the most searched BM programs in the United States.

Applicants in this category are commonly referred to as pre-experience or early career candidates, and this market continues to be popular; according to GMAT Geographic Trend Report: Testing Year 2024, while global GMAT scores are most often sent to MBA programs (63% of them are), the proportion of GMAT score reports sent to BM programs has declined from 36% in 2020 to 30% in 2024. Although pursuing an MiM or similar program doesn’t negate the need for an MBA down the road (indeed, you will find individuals with both an MiM and an MBA), these programs are excellent choices for recent graduates looking to explore their options in the business world. 

Candidates who opt to pursue their business studies now, rather than waiting until they’ve earned a few years of work experience, might do so for a few reasons: they might want to specialize early on in a certain area, such as finance or marketing, to enter a specific function; they might want to “convert” their liberal arts or science degree into a business career; or they might come from a business undergraduate degree but want to better understand how theory is applied in the real world so they can hit the ground running in their post-graduate job. Whatever the candidate’s reason, these degrees provide an excellent foundation and help individuals build the skills, knowledge, career support, and network to get a head start in their careers. Additionally, some MBA programs provide a path for their MiM students to return to complete their MBA as a second-year student.

Deferred MBA programs allow students in their final year of study (or just after, if they’re pursuing a master’s without full-time work experience) to secure a seat in the MBA classroom before gaining the generally required work experience. These programs tend to attract highflyers – students with excellent academic credentials and internships, who have demonstrated leadership potential, and who have already started formulating career goals. These candidates understand, and can articulate, how an MBA will help them achieve their goals. These programs are a great option, because they offer security (you don’t have to worry about studying for the GMAT and writing applications while juggling your busy work schedule!) and add some clout to your resume (“Wow, already accepted to an MBA program before you’ve even graduated? Impressive!”). Of course, as with anything, there are pros and cons, so it’s important to determine whether committing yourself to a deferred program makes sense with your career plans. If you decide that a deferred MBA program is the best option for you, bear in mind that they are incredibly competitive. 

Here’s some information to help you better understand which schools offer deferred MBA programs and what these programs are all about. (Information is accurate as of February 2025.)

Harvard Business School 2+2 Program 

Harvard’s 2+2 program is what the name implies – a minimum of two years (four, maximum) of work experience, followed by two years of MBA study. Harvard is looking for “innovative thinkers who have demonstrated leadership and analytical skills and want to develop their knowledge and passion to make a difference in the world.” And this difference doesn’t have to be in a “traditional” business area. In fact, the 2+2 shows some preference for candidates who are pursuing paths “that aren’t as well established”; this could include candidates who plan to work in an operating company, come from a lower socioeconomic background, are first-generation college students, aim to pursue a technically demanding role, or aspire to entrepreneurism. So, if you’re not focused on joining one of the “big three” strategy consulting firms, don’t let that stop you from applying. You might just be what the 2+2 is looking for.

New York University (NYU) Stern NYU x NYU/Stern Program

Undergraduates from NYU’s College of Arts and Science, Tandon School of Engineering, Global Liberal Studies program, Stern School of Business, and Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development can opt to join the full-time, two-year MBA program at Stern (without needing to take the GMAT or GRE) two to five years after they graduate. Financial support is a big pull with this program – accepted students are granted an Early Advancement Award of $10,000, which covers part of their MBA tuition. These students are also eligible for other Stern scholarships, including the Berkley Early Advancement Fellowship, which covers all fees and tuition for the year in which they matriculate. Accepted students with an interest in technology or in the fashion and luxury industries, and who have relevant post-undergraduate experience, can enroll in the Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA program or the Fashion & Luxury MBA program, rather than the traditional two-year MBA program.

Columbia Business School (CBS) Deferred Enrollment Program

CBS’s deferred admissions option offers flexibility; admitted students can explore the professional world for two to five years before beginning their MBA studies at a time that works best for them. This is a great opportunity for individuals who are looking to explore their career options and develop a better understanding of their business interests and passions. The flexibility continues once students begin their studies; they can specify in a letter of intent whether they prefer the 16-month (January) program or the 20-month (August) program, the latter of which includes a summer internship. Having spent time in industry or entrepreneurship during the deferment period can help students determine which MBA journey will offer the teaching and experience they need to achieve their desired professional and academic development.

Wharton Moelis Advance Access Program

Wharton’s deferred admissions program offers recent undergraduate or master’s degree students the chance to work for two to four years before joining the MBA program as a Moelis Fellow. The program is meant for “students who are ambitious, innovative, and prepared to use a sense of professional liberty to maximize their early career experiences.” In addition to seeking proactive, motivated students, Wharton encourages admits to take professional risks during the deferment period and take advantage of the opportunity to “pursue [their] early years with increased confidence and risk-tolerance.”   

Stanford Graduate School of Business Deferred Enrollment Program

Stanford’s program offers something that most do not – deferred MBA admits are able to take as little as one year (but no more than four) to gain experience before beginning their MBA studies. It is open to students in either the final year of their bachelor’s or joint bachelor/graduate program, and to those in a graduate program that they started immediately after their undergraduate study. We should note that Stanford uses the same evaluation criteria for deferred candidates as it does for applicants to its full-time MBA program, assessing how they think, lead, and see the world.

Stanford cites deferred enrollment as a good option for candidates who are unsure of their long-term professional path and feel they would benefit from gaining full-time work experience first. The school also indicates that some industries – such as private equity, biotech, and management consulting – recruit only MBA candidates who have either pre-MBA experience in that field or specialized knowledge. So, taking time out to gain that experience and knowledge can be valuable in ultimately achieving your post-MBA career goals. 

Interested in a dual degree option? Some of Stanford’s programs allow you to wait until the first year of your MBA to apply for a dual degree; others prefer that you apply in the year immediately before you matriculate in the Deferred Enrollment Program.

Stanford expects admitted students to “pursue opportunities that enable [them] to build expertise, enhance [their] skills and knowledge, expand [their] perspective, and develop professional judgment and self-confidence” during the deferral period. So you will need to reflect on what activities will allow you to develop and how you should spend your pre-MBA time.

Kellogg Future Leaders Deferred Enrollment Program

“Graduate with the confidence that incredible things are ahead.” Kellogg’s deferred enrollment program allows admitted students to work for two to five years before beginning their MBA journey. The admissions committee wants to get to know you and to understand your motivations and why Kellogg is a fit for you. Master’s and undergraduate students (excluding law, medical, and PhD students, who apply through the standard admissions process) can come from any study discipline and either graduated in the past year, are in their final year, or went straight into graduate study post-bachelor’s.

The usual admissions requirements apply – test scores, essays, letters of recommendation, interviews – for some candidates, but not all. Applicants who are already engaged in undergraduate studies at Northwestern are exempt from having to take either the GMAT or GRE, so that’s one application requirement that can be ticked off the list for candidates already wearing the purple N.

Yale School of Management Silver Scholars Program

Yale’s program works slightly differently from the other deferred admissions programs on this list. College seniors earn their MBA in a fast-tracked, three-year format immediately after they complete their undergraduate degree. The program structure is as follows: Year 1 covers the core curriculum, Year 2 involves a full-time internship, and Year 3 comprises electives. The opportunity to develop academic skills while simultaneously gaining professional experience is a unique one. In addition, Silver Scholars learn alongside students from Yale’s traditional MBA program. Access to knowledge and experience? Check!

Yale says, “Silver Scholars are chosen for their combination of intelligence and common sense, maturity and curiosity, passion and compassion. Each has made a difference and distinguished themselves in a particular field of interest.” You’ll need to ensure that you really stand out through the application process (which is largely the same as for the traditional MBA program). Remember, you’ll be studying alongside students with five years of professional experience. You’ll need to convince the adcom that you have what it takes to contribute to classroom discussion and debate.

Chicago Booth Scholars Program

Chicago Booth’s program is open to students who plan to pursue either the full-time or part-time MBA and allows candidates to apply before they graduate from college, then defer and gain professional experience for two to five years before enrolling in one of the school’s MBA programs. Booth cites flexibility as one of the major differentiators. Booth Scholars have the option of pursuing the Evening MBA or Weekend MBA, if one of those programs is a better fit with their career objectives.

Booth says that candidates for the Scholars Program “demonstrate intellectual curiosity, personal maturity, competitive scores, and leadership” and that they “have a history of substantive internships or part-time jobs and/or an entrepreneurial spirit.” The application essays make clear that successful candidates need to be able to articulate their career goals and where the MBA fits in. The school wants intelligent, independent thinkers with a considered career map. Although one’s professional goals can change during the deferment period, of course, the adcom wants to see that candidates have taken the time to think through their career path and how attending Booth aligns with it.

UVA Darden Future Year Scholars Program

Darden’s program allows final-year undergraduate students, or full-time master’s students without work experience, to work for two to five years before starting their MBA studies. Student backgrounds are diverse, because Darden aims to recruit individuals who bring to campus a range of abilities and professional and academic experience. In 2024, 121 Future Scholars were admitted and were in the deferral period, busy enhancing their professional experience. This group comprises an internationally (20%) and academically (46% non-business degrees) diverse group of students hailing from 16 countries and 43 undergraduate institutions. Applicants are evaluated in three areas: academics, extracurricular involvement, and personal characteristics. While the latter of these criteria is vague, the adcom does say that the school is looking for individuals who “aspire to be future ethical leaders and managers in a global world.” Putting thought into why you have the potential to be this kind of future leader, and whether your values align with Darden’s, would be time well spent.

MIT Sloan Early Admission

If you are an “ambitious and forward-thinking student,” Sloan’s deferred admissions option might suit you. It is open to final-year students who will not enroll in a PhD, MD, or JD program immediately after graduation and to those in graduate study (who started immediately after completing their bachelor’s) without full-time work experience, except for internships or co-op experiences. Accepted students can work for two to five years before joining the MBA program.

The admissions process is slightly different for Early Admission candidates, and the application calendar differs for non-MIT undergrads. Candidates are required to submit a 300-word cover letter demonstrating their fit with the school. MIT is quite specific about who it’s looking for. The school wants “thoughtful leaders with exceptional intellectual abilities and the drive and determination to put their stamp on the world … people who are independent, authentic, and fearlessly creative … who can redefine solutions to conventional problems, and strive to pre-empt unconventional dilemmas with cutting-edge ideas.” There is a lot to think about and squeeze into a one-page cover letter, so carefully consider how you fulfill the program’s stated criteria. Additionally, candidates must submit a resume and a 60-second video in which they introduce themselves to the class. This video is an excellent opportunity to show your personality and bring the person introduced in your cover letter to life. A second video is required in whish applicants must respond to open-ended questions that are randomly generated.

Additionally, interested MIT students who have a cumulative GPA of 4.2 or higher are in luck, because they can waive the GMAT/GRE.

Berkeley’s Accelerated Access Program 

Berkeley’s Accelerated Access Program is open to undergraduate and graduate students and encourages domestic and international candidates with diverse backgrounds and academic areas of study to apply. Admitted students not only have access to the full-time MBA program but are also eligible for consideration for dual degree programs.

Students are required to work for a minimum of two years before beginning their MBA studies but are allotted a maximum of five years in which to explore their career interests. Although Berkeley does not require its deferred students to follow particular career paths, it prods them to pursue “employment that enhances [their] leadership profile and prepares [them] to contribute to the mission-driven business community” at the school. To ensure that admitted students are meeting the required criteria, some admissions offers are conditional, and students are required to attend check-ins with a Berkeley Haas advisor or career coach. Additionally, a review might be conducted prior to the intended enrollment date to ensure that the student has met the required terms. 

Carnegie Mellon Tepper Future Business Leaders Deferred MBA Admissions Program

In February 2021, Tepper joined the deferred admissions space with its Future Business Leaders program, which allows students to defer for up to four years while they gain professional experience. The program is open to college seniors who plan to graduate from a U.S. university in the current academic year and do not yet have full-time work experience. The school says that “competitive applicants will have a strong academic record, professional internships, and undergraduate leadership experience.” Tepper’s adcom also expects candidates to have put some thought into their career goals and why the program format is a good fit for them (essay alert!). The GMAT/GRE is waived for Carnegie Mellon students, and admits are eligible to apply for scholarships, with decisions to be made at the time of matriculation.

Georgetown McDonough MBA Advanced Access Program 

The most recent player on the MBA deferred admissions scene is Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, with its MBA Advanced Access Program (MAAP). The program allows candidates who are either in their final year of undergraduate studies or in graduate school – and have no full-time work experience – to apply for deferred enrollment. Accepted students can secure a place in the class two years out from when they apply, with the option of extending this time period to three or four years.

The application process is thorough. In addition to the standard written application essay (candidates have three question options to choose from) and video essay, MAAP candidates must complete program-specific essays. The prompts for these essays ask candidates not just about their career goals but also about where they stand in working to achieve them. Additionally, applicants are expected to describe their personal and professional development plans. So, you’ll want to take some time to reflect on how you can present yourself as a proactive, principled future leader who will contribute to the school’s community and make an impact in the business world.

If these options sound interesting, but you’re still unsure whether you should study for a master’s now or wait to pursue an MBA, schedule a free consultation with an Accepted admissions expert today!

Related Resources:

• MBA Acceptance Rates: The Selectivity Index
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast for MBA Applicants
• Retaking the GMAT with a 700 – Should You Consider It?

The post Deferred MBA Programs and Other Options for MBA Hopefuls with No Work Experience appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

[powerpress]

Show Summary

MBA admissions veteran Kara Keenan Sweeney has joined Accepted. Formerly part of the admissions team at Wharton Lauder, INSEAD and Columbia Business School, she’s not only an Accepted consultant but she’s our guest on the podcast. Kara discusses various aspects of the MBA application process, including choosing the right schools, handling common challenges faced by international applicants, and approaching the essays and resume. She also touches on the qualities that management consulting firms look for in MBA recruits and provides advice for MBA re-applicants. Finally, she discusses the use of AI and ChatGPT in the admissions process and the importance of authenticity in application materials.

Show Notes

Our guest today is no stranger to Admissions Straight Talk. She’s been on several times but wore a different hat. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Kara Keenan Sweeney, Accepted consultant. Kara previously served as the Director of Admissions, Marketing and Financial Aid at Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Penn Law School.

Kara has an extensive background in graduate admissions, starting with her master’s in higher education administration from Columbia and including admissions positions at INSEAD, Penn State, and as I mentioned, Wharton’s Lauder Institute. Most recently, she was a senior recruiter for McKinsey & Company. 

Kara, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk. [1:24]

Thanks, Linda. It’s great to be with you on this side of the table.

Glad to have you back, and this time as a colleague. Let’s start with something really easy. How did you get into admissions? [1:32]

Yeah, it was a little bit by happenstance, which I think is true for a lot of admissions professionals or higher education folks. I started working at Columbia University at the beginning of my career, and one of my first jobs was in student affairs at the business school, and I was working specifically with Executive MBA students as their… Directing a cohort through the two-year program, so working closely with admissions, actually.

And I started to get a little bit of exposure to admissions and help out with interviewing and things like that. And then, a few years into that role, an admissions job opened up on my team, and I was lucky enough to get it. And the rest is history. That was, I think, 17 years ago, which is crazy to think about it. It’s been that long. But yeah, I started in student affairs and navigated my way to admissions, and it’s been a great experience.

You have a wealth of experience in MBA admissions and a lot of it has been focused in the international business space. What do you think is critical for MBAs interested in international business, and specifically those programs that you’ve worked for? [2:31]

It’s funny as I’m thinking through the question again. So much of business education now is international. The cohorts and the classes are so international. I think Wharton’s 30, 40%; Lauder, of course, is probably 50, 60%. So it’s just such a global pool of students. Back maybe 30, 40 years ago, it was mostly Americans at Wharton or whatever. So it’s changed a lot. Very global by nature. But for students who are looking at international business, it’s looking at it in that global context. It’s looking at it from a big vantage point.

For Americans who are maybe looking to gain some more hands-on experience, maybe going to INSEAD or London Business School, having a “study abroad” experience can be a great way to really get that on-the-ground cultural immersion, language immersion in some cases. For some international students coming from outside of the US, coming to Wharton Lauder or Columbia Business School or any of the US schools is a great way to get that US or North America focus. Getting that on-the-ground experience is really invaluable.

Working at Lauder and at INSEAD, it’s funny, the students are so similar in terms of their profile; of course, the languages and their objectives. They all look at business very much through a global lens. For example, in approaching applications and things of that nature, of course you want to keep that global outlook. Why do you want to apply to an international program? Why are those things important to you? And really, really dive deep into that and expand on why that is, and not just take it for granted that it’s something that the admissions committee or the admissions officer looking at your application would understand.

Yeah. So many great international opportunities. And, of course, Wharton and other schools have so many great exchanges. Even for students who don’t have a language like you need to have at INSEAD or Lauder, there are so many ways you can have an international experience through, really, so many of the business schools.

It’s interesting that you were talking about having a global lens. And what was going through my head as well was, “How do you manifest that global lens?” It would probably be through the motivation to apply to the particular programs that you’re going to as well as your post-MBA goals. Is that correct? [4:49]

Exactly. Yeah, for sure. That’s if not the most pointed question people get on their MBA essays, it will definitely be asked in some form. What are your short-term goals? What are your long-term goals? And really that’s a way… If the international component of a program like Lauder or INSEAD or any of them are important to you, you can weave that in.

“I really want to work in China, and this is important to me for X reason,” or whatever the case may be. Having that global outlook and baking that into your application is definitely important.

What if you want to work in China, for example, but you’ve never been to China? [5:36]

That’s okay too. When I would look at an application from someone, let’s say, who’d been very US-based, maybe somebody who studied a language in college but didn’t have a ton of hands-on experience, this is an opportunity to get that hands-on experience that you’re looking for. And these programs provide that.

Some of the top schools in China, for example. Somebody could spend a year or two there studying. So, it is a great way to get that experience, and you can position your application to say, “Hey, this is how I plan to do it, and it’s through this MBA program and hopefully an internship and maybe cultivating my network in China,” or wherever the case may be. And hope to do that by harnessing the program.

What are some of the best ways to handle the more common challenges faced by international applications? In other words, I’m American by citizenship and I want to study at INSEAD. Or I’m Indian and I want to study in the United States. I’m European, I want to study in the United States. What are the most common challenges that applicants face and how do you deal with them? [6:20]

For some of the programs, there are such specific requirements like for INSEAD or for Lauder you have to pass those language tests, for example. So that’s something… If you’re an applicant and you’re thinking about an international program that has some sort of language component, go on the website. I remember at Lauder, we had language audio clips that you could listen to get an idea if your language is up to snuff. If it isn’t, get a tutor, and work on it. That sort of thing. In some cases, the work that you have to do is very practical to make sure your application meets the bar. In other cases…

And I think maybe as Americans, sometimes we’re guilty of looking at things through a very American/US lens. So if you’re applying to INSEAD or London Business School or whatever the case may be as an American, make sure you’re looking through that global lens, answering their questions at a global vantage point.

What’s great about INSEAD for example, and I’m sure that it’s still the case, is they have no more than 10% from a given country. Knowing that a lot of these programs will be really intentional about global diversity, and so of course, as someone from North America, you can bring a certain outlook, skills, whatever the case may be. And then of course students from another part of the world bring something else, culturally speaking.

It doesn’t mean it’s a disadvantage, but essentially you want to make sure you meet the requirements and that you understand that you’ll be a part of a really international global cohort if you go to one of the schools outside of the US. I would say on the flip side, and maybe not so much as true for Indian applicants, but something I would come across maybe from students from Asia or Latin America… Really, anywhere in the world where someone’s first language is in English. It goes to some extent without saying, but making sure your TOEFL score is strong and that your essays are well written and that they’re grammatically correct.

It sounds so basic, but it’s really important, obviously, to the admissions committee. You can have a 750 GMAT, great scores as an undergraduate student, a great job, but we need to make sure that you can communicate clearly in a well-written way in English. Believe it or not, there are papers in MBA programs. You will have to write papers. If you do a program like Lauder, you’ll have to do a research paper so those things can be important and admissions committee members will pick up on that. So make sure your language, whether it’s English or any other language you need for a program, is really up to snuff. Brush up on it.

You mentioned the importance of the essays a minute ago, and obviously they’re not just important to international applicants, they’re important to all MBA applicants. How do you advise applicants to just approach the MBA application, the essays in particular? [9:09]

It’s like you have a bunch of puzzle pieces that you need to pull together into a beautiful mosaic of what makes you you. And I think you can just say, “Okay, I wrote good essays, I have a good GMAT or GRE score.” You’re checking the boxes, but you really need to pull it all together into a story that tells the story about your professional, academic, personal. You want to have that all woven in so that when someone’s reviewing your application, they’re thinking of you as a whole applicant. They’re getting that overall composition of who you are as a person, what your goals are, what your objectives are, and who makes you you.

That’s what we’re looking to bring in: unique people that will make up a diverse class across professions, personalities, interests, clubs, passions, and whatever the case may be. So really thinking about it from a broad stroke and then maybe narrowing in. When you’re looking at your essays, that’s when you can drill down a little more on your goals or something that makes you unique. Or, for the Wharton essay, what you might add to the community. That’s when you can start to get really specific.

But you still want to make sure that the person reviewing your application has a full picture of who you are overall as opposed to just writing down a list and checking off a box.

The checkbox approach to applications isn’t a terribly effective one. [10:53]

Right.

In your many years of experience at different programs, what were the most common mistakes that you saw in applications? [11:09]

Going back to my earlier point about something as simple as having your essays be grammatically correct, making sure your application tells a story, making sure that… For example, as you’re building your resume and other parts of your application that tell the story about what you do professionally, that it’s clear to someone who doesn’t have an area of expertise in tech or consulting or whatever the case is. So making sure that it’s something that’s clear and transparent. And I think sometimes people could get a little too in the weeds.

I like the idea of resumes really telling the story about your accomplishments as opposed to just spitting out what you do. These are your duties. Some of the things are pretty obvious. And making sure that things are really right. I remember years ago we had an applicant who, whether it was accidental or intentional, I don’t know, they had a couple of extra zeros on the end of that salary. And it just was such a large salary it didn’t totally make sense. And, of course, those things are checked when someone is admitted to a program. They go through a background check to make sure everything’s correct.

We ended up denying the person because of other aspects of their application, but I thought, “I’m sure that was an error,” but it was something that really stuck out. And it made us all raise our eyebrows, and it just didn’t add in his favor. And I think it was just one of those little mistakes that you don’t want to make. So, make sure that you’re obviously telling the truth, being factual. But catching any little errors. Make sure you have folks, whether it’s an admissions consultant or a friend, whatever, take a look at it and make sure that you’re good to go before hitting submit.

Great advice. We’ve focused on your very rich experience in terms of MBA admissions, but you’ve also worked with applicants interested in management consulting, obviously students interested in management consulting, and you were a recruiter for McKinsey. In general terms, what are the management consulting firms looking for in their MBA recruits?

And as an admissions application reader and evaluator, if you saw an applicant coming in saying, “I’m interested in going into management consulting,” and you wanted to test whether that is a realistic goal, what did you expect them to bring to the table? [12:52]

Yeah. Right. Maybe to answer the last one first, I think to some extent it also answers the first question. It’s really aptitude. It doesn’t necessarily mean you came from consulting or you were at another kind of consulting firm and now you want to go to one of the three top consulting firms. What was great about my experience in recruiting for consulting was that I was really impressed by the array and diversity of the profiles of people who were interviewed and hired to work as consultants.

Some of them had been literally research scientists in a lab, I know there was someone hired who had a PhD in nursing. There’s a whole amazing skill set of folks who… Just like an MBA program, I would often tell candidates, in particular candidates at Wharton, so much of what we’ll be looking at is exactly what Wharton looked in your application: who are you as a person? What makes you unique? Where can you add value? Because of course, with consulting, the client work crosses the gamut. Finance, healthcare.

There are so many different ways you can contribute, so don’t feel you need to fit some sort of prototype just as you don’t as an MBA applicant. But the great thing about consulting is you can come in and really have such a variety of backgrounds, variety of expertise. But, of course, having strong aptitude. There are certain skills that they look for; leadership, and empathy. Again, very similar to what an MBA program might look for. There are some consistencies across there.

So, if you made a great Wharton or Harvard or Stanford or whatever school applicant and you were admitted, there’s a pretty good chance you’re in a good spot to be a strong consulting applicant. And that goes again, regardless of what you were doing before your MBA. Because there are so many different ways those profiles can add value to the client work. Essentially, at the end of the day they’re going to say, “How can this person help solve the client’s needs?” With such a variety of client work, such a wide variety of MBAs or graduate students can help solve those problems.

You mentioned aptitude. What is aptitude for becoming a management consultant? You mentioned leadership. Is it communications? Problem-solving skills? [15:30]

For sure. Absolutely. For example, we might have quite a few folks considering consulting who had come from a military background. They hadn’t had a lot of formal business experience, but they had incredible leadership experience. And for example, empathy; they might have a story that they tell. And on my prior role, one of the components of the interview process was having a story that you could tell about an experience where you could really dive deeply into where you could add a specific skill set like empathy.

And what’s great about the hiring process at McKinsey was they would actually pretty much lay it out, I think, just like an MBA program. What are they looking for? You go to their website, go to their careers page and really make sure you review all of that because there’s a lot of helpful information. They’ll tell you, “This is exactly what we’re looking for. This is what the interview process is like.” They’ll say, for example, we are going to ask you to talk for 15 minutes back and forth with a consultant about an opportunity you had to flex your leadership skills.

You can think about that and prepare stories and reflect on your background. And then in the other case, of course, it’s having aptitude as far as problem-solving with cases and having quantitative ability. I think brushing up on your quant skills and making sure those are good to go is really just a practical essential through the process as well.

I never thought of empathy. I’m not opposed to empathy, but I never thought of it as being a requirement. Is that part of good listening? [17:03]

Yeah. It’s not a requirement, but definitely a good thing to have as you work on teams. Of course, so much of the work is team-based work with clients. Yeah. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I pivoted to campus recruiting, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was such a holistic process. Again, very similar to the MBA review process.

Let’s say MBA applicants have their grades and scores if they’re required, they know where they want to apply. How should they go about choosing schools and completing the application? What would be your recommendation? [17:31]

Yeah. This is a great question, and sometimes people just say, “I want to go to one of the top five schools. It doesn’t matter which one.” I think you want to really do your research and find out, “Do I want a small program? Do I want to be part of a large class?” like at Wharton where the world is your oyster. A million different majors and things that you can choose from and a big community to be a part of. Or do you want to be part of a smaller program where you really get to know everybody and you form that relationship or that network that, for some people, is really important? Where do you want to be geographically? Some just really obvious things.

Do you want an international experience? Do you want a one-year program like INSEAD where you’re done in 10 months, you’ve got your MBA and you can hit the ground running in your next job? Or do you want a two-year, full-time experience? You have a nice break in the summer, can do an interesting internship. Really think about the experience. And at the end, which we talked so much about when I was at Wharton Lauder and just in general, is fit.

You know that when you’re applying for jobs, “Is this the cultural fit for me? Is this a place where I can see myself?” So be sure to participate in all of those online info sessions. If you can go to campus, that’s great. If you can tap into your network, talk with students and alumni, do all of that. It’s really worth it to choose your schools wisely, choose your experience and take all the time you need early on in the process versus just say, “Okay, any of these top schools I’ll be thrilled to get into.”

Of course, I’m sure you would be thrilled to get into those, but at the end of the day you want to be at a place where you know you’ll really fit in and be happy.

Do you have a recommended order for approaching the different elements of the application, like the boxes first or the essay first or the resume first? [19:22]

Yeah. I think the first thing is to sign up for those info sessions, attend those introductory reviews, get a sense as to what the schools are looking for, and understand the application process. Sometimes the essays are updated in the summer, but generally you can assume they’ll be somewhat consistent with prior years. Thinking about your short and long-term goals. Part of the… The essays are really things where you can reveal who you really are.

Some of the things might be a little bit easier to knock out, like the GMAT or the GRE. So if there’s some things that you feel, “Hey, I can get this done,” or, “I have two recommenders I have an amazing relationship with, I’m going to get those taken care of.” Different things that you feel will be less time-consuming. Other folks might say, “Hey, I really need six months to prepare for the GMAT,” and that’s where they’re going to put their energy.

It really depends on the person. But doing your research ahead of time, giving yourself plenty of time, and focusing on the areas that you think you need to put in the most work I think makes the most practical sense.

What’s critical in a resume? [20:44]

In a perfect world, at least I’d like to see a one-page resume. But everybody’s different. If you can’t get it into one page, of course an admissions committee or officer will review two pages. But one page is ideal. Having a nice, clean format; having something that’s, as I mentioned earlier, easily understood or digestible by someone who doesn’t have expertise in what you might be an expert in. So making sure that if you show it to a friend who’s a second grade teacher, they can understand even though you’re an investment banker or whatever. They can easily understand, “Okay, this is what you do. This is what you’ve done over the last couple of years.”

If you’ve had interesting clients or projects. And don’t forget to include what makes you, you to the extent that you can on a resume. Obviously not a ton of space, but achievements, and community interests. Were you in a leadership role as an undergraduate student? Do you have a passion for working with children? Whatever the case is. Do you love to run or hike? Because that is such a great way for someone who’s reviewing a lot of things to say, “Oh, that really stood out to me. This person hosts a cooking class every week,” or does whatever that they love.

So, to the extent that you can… Obviously, you have your academics, your professional accomplishments. Be sure to include some aspect of what makes you you. I really love to see that and those are the things I tend to remember.

What advice do you have for MBA re-applicants? [22:04]

Don’t despair is the first tip. I remember every year we would have people reapply and be successful, so definitely reapply but you want to do so intentionally. Make sure that you’ve had some change in your profile, hopefully a positive change, over the last year. Maybe the quant was a weaker area of your application so you’ve retaken the GMAT or GRE. Maybe you’ve taken some quant courses online or that sort of thing to strengthen your quantitative profile.

Maybe on the other hand, you were starting out. Maybe two years out of college and you’ve gained another third year. Maybe you’ve been promoted ahead of your peers. Maybe you’re working on interesting projects or you’ve become a manager. Anything interesting that has evolved in your profile over the last year, you want to call out to the admissions committee, and that will really be the re-applicant essay in most cases. What’s changed in your profile?

So, don’t just submit the same old application. Get new recommenders, new essays. Make sure that it’s fresh and that you can show where your profile has grown over the last year and where you’ve learned, “Okay, this is where I was intentional about working on these one or two or three things that I felt I needed to submit a stronger application.” And guarantee every year there’s a really strong number of successful re-applicants. I remember quite a few when I was at Wharton Lauder, so it’s definitely something you should consider.

And I think it’s great to do it because you can reflect back, “Okay, where did I need to correct?” Work on it, do it, and then hopefully you’re successful.

Sometimes people have the qualifications, they have the skills, they have the aptitude, but they don’t portray it well. [23:43]

Right.

I think sometimes that’s very hard for them to see themselves. We tend to be in love with our own writing and our own words. [23:50]

Yeah, definitely. The way you tell your story is so important.

What do you think about applicant use of AI and ChatGPT? [24:07]

Yeah, this is a whole new world. In the last couple of years since I stepped away briefly from admissions, it’s really evolved. It was much less of a thing just a few years back. So a couple of things; it’s out there, people are going to use it, and I think admissions committee members and officers and folks reading your applications will be aware of that. It’s no secret. And I think people are pretty smart. I think those tools can be a great resource as maybe giving an idea or giving you some template to some extent.

But at the end of the day, it’s a computer voice. It’s not an authentic human voice and it’s not you, and that’s what makes an applicant stand out and makes you special. You want it absolutely to be your voice in the essays and no AI sim can punch that out for you and really cater to you. It’s out there, it’s not going away, and admissions committees and readers will be very mindful of it.

Yeah. I don’t know, Linda, if you’ve had a different experience with it or what your thoughts are, but it’s a whole new experience for me and I’m interested to see how things play out now that I’m back into the admissions world.

I think it is a tool and like any tool, it can be abused or it can be used. If you just give ChatGPT a specific question and your resume, it will write a very poor essay in response. Don’t do it. I was talking to an MBA admissions consultant and former admissions director yesterday, and he told me that he had a client and he could tell it was a ChatGPT-generated essay. And he asked his client, “Did you write this, or is this ChatGPT?” And the guy hemmed and hawed and finally said it was ChatGPT. He says, “Well, I could tell. This looks like a computer-generated essay and there’s not much substance to it.” Using it in that way is abuse and not going to serve an applicant very well. [25:58]

Right. Yeah, absolutely. It’s called artificial for a reason. It doesn’t feel authentic. I think admissions committees are going to be very wise in the use of it. Tread carefully.

When we first started hearing about artificial intelligence, Judy Gruen, who used to work for Accepted, I was talking with her one day and she said, “Why are we talking about all this artificial intelligence? We need some real intelligence down here.” [27:55]

Right.

I think that’s what the application is for and that’s what the admissions committee wants to see. [28:07]

Exactly.

What do you wish I would’ve asked you? We’ve covered a lot of ground here. [28:20]

I would say, what do I love about admissions or what do I love about this kind of work? And I absolutely love working with the applicants and learning their stories. I talked with somebody earlier today; amazing profile, very interesting life story, great goals. And I was so energized just chatting with him and learning about his objectives and how we could perhaps help him. That’s the best thing, is seeing the candidate experience.

Seeing them go from just the investigative stage, research phase of considering an MBA program. Working with them, hopefully getting admission, deciding where they’re a best fit. It’s just great to be part of someone’s journey. And that is life changing in so many ways. My former colleague at Lauder had a board in her room with all the couples that met each other in the program. And marriages are made, babies are born, all kinds of things. And if not a relationship, obviously you have your degree, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Hopefully, you will reach your professional and academic goals. But you will also have an amazing experience for the year or two that you’re in the program; new friends, many of whom are from around the world, just a great experience. Playing even just a small part in that is definitely the best part, for sure.

You joined Accepted fairly recently, but wait until you start hearing from clients that they’re admitted. It’s the biggest reward when you’re on this side of the desk. [29:41]

Yeah.

Relevant Links:

• Kara Keenan Sweeney, Consultant Profile and Contact Information
• Mapping Your MBA Application Quiz
• MBA Application Rejection Review and Strategy

Relevant shows:

• How to Get Into HEC Paris, podcast Episode 565
• NYU Abu Dhabi: Top Ranked MBA Program in the Middle East, podcast Episode 549
• How to Get an MBA at Columbia Business School, podcast Episode 528
• Get Into INSEAD, the Business School for the World, podcast Episode 520
• Applying to Wharton Lauder? Do Your Research!, podcast Episode 465 

Subscribe:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”iTunes-Widged”] [xyz-ihs snippet=”Get-Stitcher”]    [xyz-ihs snippet=”Subscribe-on-Android”]

Podcast Feed

The post Former Wharton/Lauder Admissions Director Joins Accepted: Welcome Kara Keenan Sweeney [Episode 570] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

[powerpress]

Please enjoy this encore edition of  one of Admission Straight Talk’s most popular episodes of 2023: “The Cornell Johnson EMBA Program: Four Options for the Largest EMBA Program in the United States.”

This encore was chosen not only due to the episode’s  popularity,  but also because it’s a fascinating exploration of a well-established, large EMBA program with four distinct components. If you are even considering an Executive MBA, this episode is a must-listen. Alternatively, if you are debating whether to go down the MBA or EMBA path, Dean Mark Nelson and Dr. Manoj Thomas provide unique insight with indispensable advice obtained from their years of experience.

To learn more about EMBA admissions, download Accepted’s free guide, Ace the EMBA. 

Did you know that Cornell Johnson has the largest Executive MBA program in the United States with four distinct flavors? I didn’t, but let’s learn together about Johnson’s EMBA program, its unique distributed classroom, and how to get in from its dean and director. [SHOW SUMMARY]

Welcome to the 506th episode of Admission Straight Talk, Accepted’s podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before I dive into today’s interview, I want to invite you to download Ace the EMBA, expert advice for the rising executive. This free guide will compliment today’s podcast and give you suggestions on how to choose the right EMBA program for you, differentiate yourself from your competition in a positive way and present yourself effectively as a future business leader, who will bring credit to any program that accepts you. It gives me great pleasure to have for the first time on Admissions Straight Talk, Dean Mark Nelson, the Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean and Professor of Accounting at Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Dr. Manoj Thomas, Senior Director of EMBA and MSBA programs, and the Nakashimato Professor of Marketing, also at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. Dr. Nelson and Dr. Thomas, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Thanks for having us.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

Thank you, Linda, delighted to be here.

Dean Nelson, what makes a Cornell Executive MBA program different from other EMBA programs? [1:55]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

That’s a great question, Linda. I mean, first off is the fact that we have these four different flavors of a Cornell MBA. And that’s very intentional, it’s been developed over time. We started initially with our Metro EMBA program, which is based in New York City, and which is focused on a general management EMBA, providing that jurisdiction, that market.

Second, then we have our Americas EMBA program, and that’s a really unique program where we’re reaching out to executives throughout the Americas using our own unique approach to distributed learning. And then third, we created an FMBA program, a collaboration with Tsinghua University, a finance-focused EMBA, and that’s bilingual and offered in Beijing. And then fourth, we have our MBA/MS in Healthcare Leadership program, which is providing both an EMBA and also an MS in healthcare from two great institutions, the Johnson School and the Weill Cornell Medicine.

And so I go through that because the unique combination here is that we’ve got a general interest EMBA in New York, we’ve got something focused in the healthcare sector, we’ve got something that’s a unique and leading program in China, and then this Americas program serving the Americas. And I see that as a pretty special and unique roster of great EMBA programs.

Now, when you think about what’s the spine that relates all these together, there’s a couple things that I’d shout out, and then I’d maybe ask my colleague, Manoj, if there’s anything he wants to add in. One is that in all of these programs, we have a team-based learning approach that we think is really, really important. And by that I mean that we have students that, of course they’re performing individually, but they’re also on small teams, they’re coached, they’re assessed, they’re given feedback.

So we think of business as a team sport, and the ability of these executives to deliver exceptionally well in that context, we think it’s really important and so we’re very intentional about how we go about that approach. It is the case that in all of these programs, the students are working on problems that they’re addressing at work right now, so they’re able to put it into practice, and we think that team-based approach is really key.

And I guess the other thing that is unique, not only about the EMBA programs but about Cornell is that we have our Cornell Tech campus in New York City. So we are based in Ithaca, New York, but what a lot of people don’t realize is that we won the opportunity from then Mayor Bloomberg to create a new tech-based campus in the heart of New York City and have done so.

And so we have two of our programs, Metro and Healthcare Leadership, based at the Cornell Tech campus and all of our programs end up having residential sessions there. So to be able to offer programming at a campus that’s been built from scratch in the last 10 years, that’s very, very forward-focused and future-focused on the digital economy, that’s pretty unique and special, and we’re very proud of that.

That’s great. Dr. Thomas, do you want to add something? [5:28]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I think Mark covered it very well, I’ll just reiterate what he said. I think what really makes our suite of MBA programs, EMBA programs, unique is first that I cannot think of any other popular university offering so many distinctive options for students depending on their specific needs. So that’s one thing that really makes it unique.

And the other thing is that we have realized quite early on that MBAs in general, but Executive MBAs in particular, they need not just to learn the skills, but they need the transformation of behaviors. They want to evolve as individuals, as people, and we’ve created a pedagogy that does both.

How? [6:09]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

So, as Mark talked about that, we are an Ivy League institution, you come to our program and we’ll teach you microeconomics and macroeconomics and we’ll teach you regressions, we’ll teach you accounting and we’ll teach you finance and marketing. And unless you know all of these things pretty well, you’ll not be able to graduate from our program. So that’s how you develop the skills.

The behavioral transformation comes from our team-based learning. So over time, they start learning that they not only have to do well individually in these courses, but there are lots of team assignments, and they’re intentional, they’re designed, keeping in mind that there will be behavioral learning here where they’ll get feedback from team members about their biases, about their preconceptions and how they can be more effective team players.

And all of that is a part of our curriculum. So that’s how we blend both of these goals and meet both of these goals. And I think that’s one of the things that makes us different from other programs, as far as I know.

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Can I jump in real quick?

Sure, of course, anytime. [7:13]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I just wanted to add that the process by which this happens is very carefully thought out. So we have a leadership framework that we created at Cornell. We call it the four Cs, where we’ve got competence and character and compassion and courage. And we talk about what each of those means and what those skills are. But when we’re talking about people operating in a group, the real key is, you give some instruction, but then they apply it and then they get very specific feedback, and rinse and repeat.

You keep doing that and working on each person’s individual weaknesses and helping them be stronger. This relates to diversity and inclusion, this relates to harnessing the power of the group and being able to identify the complementarities that make a group stronger. So we’ve got people who are absolute specialists in this that are team coaches and team advisors, and that’s a spine that runs through the program.

That’s very specific, not just general teamwork. They’re getting feedback on the nature of their participation? [8:20]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Yeah, I think it’s true, because oftentimes people will throw folks into teams and then they’ll throw them in another team and then they’ll throw them in another team, and that’s actually not teaching them, that’s having them work in teams and so…

And having them fall on their face and learn from falling on their face. [8:33]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Exactly.

When you’re talking about working in teams, you’re talking about people who also have usually full-time or almost full-time responsibilities. How do they navigate that?  [8:55]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

That’s a great question. I’m happy to take that question. I teach in the program, and I didn’t really have an appreciation of how much our students have to go through until I started tracking them very closely. And to your point, Linda, I realized that the behavioral transformation happens because, as you said, they have very busy lives; they have their careers, they have their families, some of them have small kids, some of them have parents at home. And then they’re ambitious, and they sign up for this rigorous MBA program.

And what really makes them committed to the pedagogical goals is the fact that they’re learning as a team. And let me kind of illustrate with an anecdote, and I kind of encountered this quite frequently. Sometimes we have student assignments and we have team assignments in all our courses, individual assignments and team assignments. Sometimes the students, when they have to choose between doing extremely well on a team assignment versus an individual assignment, guess which one they focus more on?

Team? [10:02]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

A team assignment, because they feel they have this obligation to make sure the team performs well. And even if they have to make a trade-off there, they focus on a team assignment. And I think the team structure kind of helps us enable the students to navigate all the conflicting demands in their lives, enables them to grow in the program.

Cornell’s EMBA program is the largest in the US. What advantage does that create? [10:42]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I have to begin by saying that we don’t know the exact number of enrollments in all schools, right? The only source that we can rely on our third-party industry service. So the most reliable source for us is EMBAC, which is an independent body that surveys all EMBA programs. And in the latest survey, they surveyed 125 schools, and we looked at the number of schools that have big programs and there are seven such schools when I looked at that. They are Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Sloan, UCLA, and Wharton.

And then we looked at the total, the number of students enrolled, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we are the top in terms of students, whether or not we include our students in Beijing, even if we include our students just in the US, we have the largest cohort of students in coming in any year, at least in the year 2021 to our EMBA programs. Now your second question is, how does that help us?

I think the most concrete is that we learn from our mistakes, and we share those learnings as we start new programs or other programs. So each program doesn’t have to commit its own mistakes to improve; it can learn from the mistakes that other people are committing, our other programs are committing, and we learn from our strengths and we learn from our observations.

So going back to the team-based learning, we started our team-based learning with our Cornell Americas program, which uses this distributed classroom, and I can talk about that later. But we had to create team-based learning because the classrooms are distributed, they are not in Ithaca or in New York, they are spread all over the North Americas. And once we learned that, and once we realized the power of that pedagogical approach, we said, “Well, we have to roll that out to our EMBA Metro and our EMBA MS/Healthcare.”

And our program directors wanted to, were very keen to embrace those because they saw the power of this pedagogical innovation. So I think the most important advantage is that we learn, we have these internal learning process, so as an organization we are improving because we have all these programs. The second one is more obvious and more straightforward; we have a pretty large network, which means that Cornell EMBA alumni, that they’re in Chicago or in Toronto or in Peru, and they’ll have lots of other Cornell alumni that they can connect with.

Dean Nelson, do you want to add to that? [13.17]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I really do. I agree wholeheartedly with what Manoj said. There’s another thing that’s maybe less apparent, but I think is really important. And that is, you’ll look and there may be some schools where the EMBA program is sort of a one-off and they have a focus on something else, but they also have an EMBA program. And it’s really critical to highlight, and Manoj alluded to this, but it takes a special skillset to teach EMBA students well.

You’re dealing with more experienced people. , You’re dealing with people who are dealing with the strategic issues you might be covering on a daily basis. And while, Linda, you’re dead on that they’re very busy people, the other thing is that on a Saturday, they’re bringing into the classroom what happened at work on Friday, and they’re looking to apply it on Monday. And learning as a faculty member to draw on the incredible experience in that class and on the immediacy of them putting their education to work.

You’re sort of a conductor of a symphony more than you are playing your own instrument. It’s always that case, I think, when you’re dealing with graduate students, it’s even more so for EMBA students. So if we have four programs with somewhat different clientele and modalities, but they’re all focused on EMBAs, what that means is that we have a deeper bench of faculty, we have deeper expertise of faculty that we can bring to bear on this really important but somewhat distinctive student population.

What is a distributed classroom and how does it contribute to the Cornell EMBA options? [15:07]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I would ask Manoj because Manoj is teaching actively using this approach and he can describe what it’s like as a faculty member as well as more conceptually.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

Happy to. I think we are quite proud of this. And I have to admit that we started off this concept in 2005. We did not realize that this is going to become so big and powerful. We did not anticipate a pandemic 15 years down the line and everybody going hybrid and online. But we started off 2005 in a partnership, our partnership with Queen’s University, and actually they are the ones who were the pioneers who had this idea.

And so we started our EMBA program in New York City and we were looking to take this, what we believe is a pretty strong EMBA program, to the rest of the country, and so were Queen’s, and we thought that we should partner with them. And we created a program spanning all of Americas, North and South America, in 20 locations.

And the problem that we faced was the following; it’s not like teaching engineering or a math class or a chemistry class where you can look at the glass slides, take notes, or read books and learn. In a business class, it’s very important to interact, it’s very important for people to debate and thrash out ideas and question and challenge. How do we create that environment? And this is more so for Executive MBA because there’s a wealth of experience, Linda, in each classroom. So how do we create that?

So people, our colleagues, who were running this program at that time, had this very powerful idea of creating classrooms, physical classrooms, in each location. So we have 20 such small physical classrooms, each can accommodate 10, 15 students. Students physically go into those classrooms every weekend. They spend eight hours there starting at 8:00 AM in their respective time zones, and the faculty either go to a studio in Cornell or a partner institution.

And we have a studio which is pretty much like a television studio. If you’ve ever happened to be in Ithaca, I’d be happy to give you a tour of their studio. We go in there and we have colleagues helping us beam our content, and we see all the students on a big, large, huge wall in front of us. And I can then say, “Ron in Toronto, what do you think of what Lisa just said in Dallas?” And then I can turn to someone in Seattle and say, “Okay, who do you think is correct?” And they can all interact with each other.

So what we’ve done is we created this structure where we can recreate an MBA classroom by recreating in peer-to-peer interactions, and at the same time we can distribute it across multiple locations. This is very different from what many other institutions currently… the way they currently think of online education. They think of a Zoom room, putting people in Zoom rooms, et cetera.

We also have those kinds of approaches but I think that the foundation of the Americas program, this concept of distributed classrooms, I think it’s a marvelous pedagogical innovation that has helped us roll out her MBA to many far different places.

So it’s almost a combination of small groups and online. [18:33]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you can tell I’m excited about this too. There are a couple things to add to this. Manoj gave a wonderful explanation. The first might only… this metaphor might only work for people of a certain generation, but there used to be a sitcom called Frasier. And Frasier was a psychologist on the radio and he had someone in the control room named Roz. And Roz would sort of orchestrate what was happening while Frasier was sort of the talent on the line.

And one of the things that is really powerful about this approach is that there is a Roz; in addition to the faculty member, there’s a control room. So what Manoj didn’t say was when he called on Ron in Toronto, the person in the control room pops up a record of what Ron’s doing, what’s his background, how does he tie in. There are opportunities for that controller to collaborate with faculty member in terms of how they’re offering ways that students in this distributed format can be providing polls and votes and input in a variety of ways.

So before I saw this, I sort of thought of a distributed environment as being, “How close to a real face-to-face classroom can you get?” And what I didn’t realize is that in some ways you have an augmented capability, unique capability. And that’s really interesting. And once again, it takes work to know how to harness that well. It takes the infrastructure and the talent and the team, but from a faculty member perspective, you have to learn to do that extraordinarily well. And that’s part of the investment that we’ve made in the structure.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

Yeah, I just want to echo what Mark said. It is wonderful. Yeah, my colleagues, Todd and Steve, who are always behind the scene and in fact many times I’ve turned to them and asked them, “Which boardroom do you think I should ask this question to?” And they’ll tell me which boardroom is kind of just poised to answer that question. Yeah. It kind of augments our teaching skills being in that structure.

Do the students who, let’s say, attend in Dallas versus the students who attend in Chicago or Boston or wherever they are, or Florida, do they have group projects? Do they get together socially? Do they become a cohort? [21:08]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Yes, and they get very tight. So they’ll do group projects together and they’ll be socializing together. But they’re also, as Manoj was saying, they’re relying on each other and so they become extremely close. The other thing that’s interesting… I guess two other things about this format that I just find so intriguing. One is that we’ll allow students to do a weekend in another town.

And so there are some people who just have this bucket list of saying, “I’m going to go to every one of these boardrooms at one point or another and I’m going to join their…” Because they all know each other. They see each other and they’re interacting, both online and also when we do residential sessions. So the idea of someone from Mexico City popping up to Seattle and being hosted, they really enjoy that.

I assume there’s also forums for interaction midweek .[22:21]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. But another thing that’s interesting and that maybe isn’t immediately apparent is that, I mean you really, really benefit from each other in an Executive MBA classroom. Certainly do in a residential MBA classroom, but even more so from an Executive because they’ve got so much to share. And what’s better yet is imagine that you’re doing a case and you’re asking people’s perspectives, and one person’s in Santiago, Chile and another’s in Monterey, Mexico and another’s in New York City and another is in the Bay Area.

And they’re not only from a different place. I mean, in our residential program we have 43 countries represented. Not only from a different place, they’re in a different place and they can talk about how right now that cultural challenge might be addressed in their particular settings. And so to have that simultaneity of diversity of background, it’s just really unique, and I think it’s an unsung learning advantage of this approach.

Does any individual cohort ever get together with the rest of its cohorts? And do the cohorts ever meet altogether? [23:36]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Yeah, we have residential sessions where they’ll come to the Ithaca campus, they’ll come to our Cornell Tech campus, our partner university, Queen’s. And, I mean, it’s like a huge family reunion when this happens because everyone knows each other and they not only interact during the day in the classroom, but I think the bar scene in Ithaca benefits from their presence. I mean, they get out and they socialize a lot with each other and they’re excited to do so.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I’ll just add to what Mark said. I talked to somebody who was in our first class, 2005, who graduated from the first class and I asked them, “What is it that you really take away, remember, even now from the program that you attended in 2005?” And he said, “My classmates, my board roommates,” and he said, “We’re still in touch, we still meet.”

So part of it is, as you, I think, quite astutely pointed out the beginning, it’s a very rigorous program because they have conflicting demands and now they’re put in a team, they’re accountable for the team because many a time they’re leading their team project and they kind of rotate in their roles and they get to know each other very well, extremely well. They get to know each other’s family problems so they can help each other around all of that.

Now they’re seeing other teams online and now they’re curious to meet the team in Toronto or to meet the team in Calgary or meet the team in Boston. And like Mark said, then there are these residential sessions that happens twice a year, and they come to Ithaca or they go to a Cornell Tech campus and they’re like, “Oh yeah, so finally we get to meet the people in Boston and we finally get to meet people in Monterey,” and they bond there. So I think it’s a wonderful structure.

What do most people not realize about Cornell’s EMBA programs, or options I should say, that you would like them to know? And are there any misconceptions that you would like to dispel? [25:31]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I’ll say a couple and then invite Manoj to jump in. So first off, there’s some things that I think they just automatically expect. They know Cornell University and the Ivy League School and they anticipate that it’s going to be high quality and rigorous, and it definitely is. I think the team approach that we were describing is something that people probably don’t realize to the extent that they could.

The amazing diversity of students in these classes, both in, depending on the particular program, geographic location, functional orientation. In our Healthcare Leadership program, half of the program consists of clinicians, but the other half are people from the healthcare sector really broadly defined. So they’re healthcare implement manufacturers and consultants and pharmaceutical, biotech. So that diversity of functional discipline and orientation, it takes them only a little while to realize just how much they have to draw upon and to learn from.

So all of that I think is true. What people maybe don’t know, I don’t know if I’m dissuading or informing at this point, but sometimes people have the image of an institution of Cornell’s standing, as full of a bunch of stuffy people who aren’t approachable and aren’t warm and aren’t caring and aren’t supportive. And it’s very, very much the opposite. So you go back to the motto of Cornell, “Any person, any study,” the idea of being welcoming and embracing and supportive.

Everyone’s ambitious, everyone’s driven, but it’s not cutthroat. It’s exactly the opposite. And that then leads to the power of the Cornell network after they graduated. And it’s sort of like the rings of an onion or whatever, where you start maybe with your team and then your cohort and your class and your program, your year. But it doesn’t take long before you’re talking about the Cornell University network of well over 250,000 people and they’re all, we talk about, bleeding Cornell Red, huh?

And they’re sort of part of your network. There’s this line about Cornell that we’re elite but not elitist. And I think that’s really important for people to understand. They’re joining a family and it’s an accomplished family, but it’s a very supportive and close family. And that makes the process fun and affirming and special.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

Can I add, Linda? And in terms of the more… I agree with all that Mark said, I want to touch on a couple of concrete things. I was talking to somebody on the West Coast and this person was telling me that this person is working in a good company, technology company, and saying, “I want to do an EMBA, but from a place like Cornell, but I can’t travel, I don’t have time to travel.” And that’s the first myth I’d like to bust.

If anybody is listening to the program, I want you to know that you don’t have to travel to Ithaca or New York to get a Cornell EMBA. You can be in Seattle, you can be in San Jose, you can be in Los Angeles, and you can stay there, and without quitting your job, you can get an Ivy League Cornell EMBA. That’s the first thing.

And when I told this person this, they said, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s really interesting. I probably would like to enroll.” And then he thought about this and said, “But I’ll have to take a GMAT.” I said, “Nope. The GMAT usually was required for your regular MBAs, but if you’re applying for an Executive MBA program, we look at your profile. We need certain experience, we need 15 years experience, we need you to have some management experience, leadership experience.”

“But if you have those, and we need you to have an undergraduate degree that enables you to attend and respond to rigorous courses. But if you meet those benchmarks, we know that you are very busy, working executives, so we are not going to ask you to take a bunch of time preparing for tests. We don’t need to do that because we have enough information from your credential to evaluate your preparedness for a program.”

So those are the two things I’d like all prospective applicants to know. Even if you are in Canada or anywhere in any part of the US, you have access to a Cornell EMBA program. And we made it easy for you to complete your EMBA without quitting your jobs and without having to take too many leave, et cetera. And the bonus that you get is that you’ll get some lifelong friends.

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Sorry, one more thing that just… Manoj sparked something in my mind. Something I want to make sure people don’t do. Don’t psych yourself out. Don’t think you can’t do this. One of the things we have, we have a pre-assessment process where we ask people to just reach out to our admissions folks and talk to them. Applying to an EMBA program is very different than what people have in mind maybe when they applied for undergrad, where they filled out this common app and mailed it and sat there nervously for four months, wondering whether anything’s going to happen.

With an EMBA program it’s a lot more almost like executive placement. I mean, you’re talking with busy people, with accomplished people that… they don’t want to waste their time, we don’t want to waste their time. So early on in the process, we’ll talk about what our programs are like. We’ll help people understand which program is best for them. We’ll walk them through the process.

And if there was some reason why we didn’t think someone was a fit for any of these programs, we tell them. So we’re not wanting to waste their time. Instead, we’re wanting to help them through this process, just as we’ll help them through their EMBA. Sometimes I’ll talk to people and they’ll say, “Oh, I never applied. I could never get in.” It’s like, “Well, how do you know if you don’t talk to us?”

We promise we won’t lead you on, we won’t waste your time, but give yourself the opportunity to be considered because it could be a life-changing opportunity.

Dr. Thomas, what are the cities where the distributed classrooms are located? [32:08]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

On the East Coast we have Ithaca, New York, Boston, and DC. Then we have Seattle, LA, San Jose, and Francisco. We have Dallas and Houston. And then we have 10 other cities in Canada. And we have Monterey and Lima-

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Santiago, Mexico City. I’ll jump in.

Is that for all the EMBAs? [32:36]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

For EMBA Americas. We have our Metro EMBA program, which is based in New York City. So if you are from the Northeast and if you really are passionate about being a part of the business community in New York City or in the tri-state area, then we would say that you should go to the Metro MBA program, which operates at the Cornell Tech through our state-of-the-art campus for business school.

And I think I should… I don’t know if it’s the right time or not, I also want to talk about the other program, which is our EMBA/MS program that’s also based in New York City. And that’s a very unique program of its kind. I don’t know whether it’s the right time or you want me to…

As you might know, Linda, one of the sectors that is booming a lot in the US and for the rest of the world is healthcare.

There is a lot of need for people who are trained in management skills in the healthcare sector. And so many of the business schools have been creating specialized tracks for healthcare MBA. What we’ve created I think is truly unique. So it’s not just a healthcare track. We come up with a dual-degree program where students get an MBA and they get an MS from a reputed medical school, which is Weill, and they’re co-taught.

Half the courses are taught by business school professionals, our Ivy League professors teaching MBA programs, and half of them are taught by faculty who are clinicians or professors from the medical school. This is a program that is completely unique and it’s only five years old. And I’m optimistic in 10 years from now when we have brilliant physicians and healthcare professionals all over the country looking for the best healthcare program in the country, I’m optimistic, I’m hopeful that they’ll turn to us.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the pre-assessment? [34:51]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

There’s a bit of form as well as a conversation that people will have. Really quickly in the process the idea is to just get… it’s just the starting bare-bones amount of information for us to be able to help someone to triage. And then from there, we’re moving on to walk them through the process itself. When you’re submitting a pre-assessment, we could pop that up to something too.

It’s before you’re entering the formal application process, it’s before you have to have any kind of an application fee. It’s just designed to get you started. And it’s a very small amount of information before you’re having a conversation with an admissions expert that’s there to answer any question that you might have.

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

And just add to that a couple of… As Mark said, it’s very, very short. And we have basically two goals in this. One is we want to tell them, as Mark said earlier, if the students are not appropriate or suitable for an EMBA program, we want to tell you early on that, “Okay, this is probably not the best program for you.” And we’ll guide them to other programs or give them that feedback. That’s the first step.

So it’s very easy, just fill in your name and give them your LinkedIn profile and then you basically have a conversation. Someone tells you that, “Well, you are the right kind of person who should apply,” or, “You should not apply.” Now if you are the kind of person who should apply, then our admissions officers will work with them to help them complete the application process and guide them through the application process. So the pre-assessment serves those two kind of goals, which are I think very important.

Who should take the GMAT, GRE or EA? Do you have any preference among those tests? [36:49]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I’m not quite sure why. If you really want to see where you rank amongst all the other students, and if you have that need, I think you should take the test. I think typically people take the GMAT. I took the GMAT long, long time ago, and I suspect most of the business school students were applying to do MBA program, they take the GMAT.

If it’s not used at all, then there’s no point in it. There’s absolutely no point in it. [37:21]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I’d say they don’t need to be submitting a test score. If they’ve done it and it’s a wonderful score, then go ahead and submit it because why not show something wonderful? But it’s not a barrier. And I want to go back to something that Manoj was saying earlier, which is when you’re dealing with someone who’s 35, 40 years old and they think they’ve already got a record of accomplishment, it’s a little silly to try to judge them based on a standardized test score or based on their undergraduate grade point.

It’s what have you done for the last 10, 15 years? And that’s the real track record. And so it makes sense that the less experienced the target audience of a program is, the more things like tests and undergraduate performance and stuff matter because you’ve got less else to go on. But at this point, we’re looking to bring in people who are already successful and already leaders, and to just accelerate their trajectory, make them that much stronger and able to go that much farther.

What if somebody has, for whatever reason, they blew off undergraduate, they had a tough time, they have a really poor GPA, they have a 2.5 GPA, but they have excellent work experience, they’ve really accomplished a lot once they got out of school. Do they have a chance? [38:43]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I’m very glad that you asked that question because I think all the applicants should get the correct picture here. So our program is quite rigorous. So they had to do quantitative analysis, they had to do strategic analysis, they have to have soft skills and hard skills. So we do require a certain level of competence on the part of applicants as they’re applying. And the only point is, “How do we assess that?”

As Mark said, for us, it’s not an entrance exam that helps us assess it. It’s the performance, past-academic performance, and their track record in the industry. And when I talk to my colleagues in admissions, “What do you look for?” And they’ve said that many times they’ve said, “No, this person looks really good on paper. And in fact this person also has very good academic track record, but I don’t think this person will be able to contribute to the team in a team discussion, so I don’t think this person is a good fit.”

So that’s the approach that we take. Your question is more specific and probably best answered by one of my colleagues in the admissions office, but my suspicion is their answer will be something like this. They’ll say that if a person has got really weak undergraduate track record, then they most likely would be guided to take some courses or show some evidence for some kind of… the ability to take… perform right in a classroom.

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I’ve actually run into this situation before, and people grow and change. I don’t know about how you think about when you were an undergraduate, but I personally am grateful that I’ve grown and changed since those days. Thank goodness.

My husband likes to say,”I’ve never met anybody who feels they were smarter five years ago than today.” [40:51]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

And some people have more to grow when they’re 18 than others or at a different point in time. And so it’s just really, really important to know where they’re at at the time that they’re applying. And so part of what happens with pre-assessment is that, let’s just say that someone has nothing in their background or their education to suggest that they would be comfortable dealing with the more quantitative aspects of the program.

They will recommend some training materials to help the person be prepared. Because the last thing we want to do is to have someone admitted and not be able to do the work and not have a great experience. So think of it as almost a diagnostic process in this admissions process. And we’ll look to see if there’s a weakness in someone’s background that they should address just to make sure they get the most out of the program length.

But again, don’t start off by saying, “Well, I got a two five in undergrad, so there’s no way Cornell would accept me.” Let’s have the conversation, because it might be quite possible that they’d be a tremendous person based on the trajectory of their career since they were an undergraduate.

If you were a potential applicant thinking ahead to an EMBA application and program, what is the one thing you would do to prepare yourself to apply? [42:08]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

That’s a very good question. 

Dean Mark Nelson:

This is going to sound incredibly selfish because I am an accounting professor, okay? But one of the things, if someone has never ever… and I’m looking really past the application process, if someone’s never seen any kind of financial statements, financial information, anything of that nature, there are all of these different short courses or overviews or whatever. Just getting a little bit of the bare bones of accounting I think is useful because then when you jump into an accounting class, you’ve got some of that language, some of that syntax. But again, I can’t say that I’m not being self-serving in that because I am an accounting professor and I love this stuff.

Dr. Thomas recommends a basic course in marketing? [43:17]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

So I just wanted to make sure, Linda, well, I would definitely recommend a basic course in marketing clearly, but I just wanted to clarify, did you say that after they get admitted or before they apply?

Potential applicant. [43:32]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

A potential applicant? So if somebody is thinking of applying for an EMBA program, my recommendation would be get in touch with other EMBA students. Understand the experience, understand whether this is for them. It’s not for everybody.

And the challenges. [43:53]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

Yeah. It’s time consuming for people to go through… I mean, once you enroll in an EMBA program, I’ve heard people say that, “We kept our social life on the side for two years, because all we do is work and study.” And so you are giving up a lot for two years and you have to make sure that you are in it because it’s going to be valuable for you. That’s going to be my advice.

[Dean Mark Nelson]

No, that’s great. And I’d also add, if you’re in a committed relationship, sit your partner down and say, “Okay, are we in this together?” Because at graduation, I always make sure to thank the partners and to say, “Congratulations to the both of you for getting your EMBA because it was a team effort at home as well as in the classroom.”

By the way, I was laughing when you were suggesting taking an accounting class because I was an undergrad, I have an MBA, but it was a full-time MBA and not an Executive MBA, and I was a political science major. I took the minimum amount of math in college that I possibly could get away with. So when I was thinking of getting the MBA, and at the time you only needed one year of work experience, I took a math class to prepare myself and one accounting class because I felt I needed to know something about the language of business before I committed to this. [45:12]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

And were you glad you did that?

Yes, I was. I was very glad I did that. [45:15]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

There you go.

Proof positive, absolutely. So I’m sorry, Dr. Thomas, I did not take marketing at that point. [45:22]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

That’s okay. No, you did your marketing in your MBA program then.

Is there anything you would’ve liked me to ask you that I haven’t asked? [45:29]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

I don’t think so. I think if there’s one thing I’d emphasize is something that Manoj said right towards the end, a really, really good way to understand what a program is about once you’ve talked to people in admissions, is to say, “Who are some students who are some alumni that I could speak with?”

And there you’re talking to somebody who’s been a customer and they’ve been part of the whole experience, and they will give their own perspective. And certainly we would be happy and proud for people to speak with any of our current students or any of our alumni because we’re looking for that alignment and that excitement about being part of our community, and we think they’ll convey that very well.

Dr. Thomas, what would you have liked me to ask you? [46:33]

[Dr. Manoj Thomas]

I think you’ve asked all the great questions, Linda.

I just wanted to emphasize the behavioral transformation part of the EMBA program along with the skilled learning, and the fact that there is an EMBA program which is specifically designed for people from different industries, different backgrounds. I think you’ve covered all of that, and those are the things I would’ve liked to emphasize in this conversation.

I want to thank both of you, Dean Nelson and Dr. Thomas. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been delightful. Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about Cornell Johnson’s EMBA programs? [47:44]

[Dean Mark Nelson]

Johnson.cornell.edu\programs\EMBA.

And a final reminder, download your free copy of Ace the EMBA, Expert Advice for the Rising Executive. 

Listener, thank you too for joining Dean Mark Nelson and Dr. Manoj Thomas and me for our 506th episode. Thanks again for coming. [48:24]

Related Links:

• Executive MBA Programs | EMBAs from Cornell Johnson
• Cornell EMBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines [2022 – 2023]
•  Ace the EMBA: Expert Advice for the Rising Executive, a free download

Relevant shows:

• How to Get Accepted to Cornell Johnson MBA [Episode 488]
• Applying to Wharton Lauder? Do Your Research! [Episode 465]
• Ace the Executive Assessment [Episode 483]
• Why Is This Successful Leader Investing In an Oxford Said Executive MBA? [Episode 454]

Subscribe:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”iTunes-Widged”][xyz-ihs snippet=”Get-Stitcher”]   [xyz-ihs snippet=”Subscribe-on-Android”]

Podcast Feed

The post Encore: Cornell Johnson EMBA Program: Four Options for the Largest EMBA Program in the United States [Episode 543] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Our consultants receive a lot of questions from clients about applying to MBA programs through The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. I’ve heard myths that suggest that applying to one (or more) of the 22 Consortium schools through The Consortium’s application is disadvantageous. But as the former director at two Consortium schools, I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth — provided you meet The Consortium’s minimum qualifications.

Though the requirements, participating schools, and corporate partners have changed over The Consortium’s 57-year history, not only is the organization the best deal in town but it also gives its members an alumni network that extends throughout the 22 member schools.

The Consortium history and mission

Initially, The Consortium provided opportunities for young African-American men to have a fair chance at rising up the corporate ladder via the MBA. Later, The Consortium added Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and women to its mix. Membership came along with the fellowship.

However, after the Supreme Court decided the Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger cases, The Consortium opened its doors to offer membership to selected applicants that further The Consortium’s mission to promote the “inclusion in global business education and leadership . . . of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans.” Members do not need to belong to one of these groups but must demonstrate the mission through community and professional action and impact. Thus, membership is no longer race based but rather mission driven. Applicants must also demonstrate the ability to succeed in a Consortium member school’s MBA program.

Consortium member benefits

Like the undergraduate Common App, candidates can apply to up to six schools with only one application for a fraction of the cost that the candidate would incur by applying to each school separately. The Consortium membership grants the candidate access to the orientation and corporate partners. Many members receive internship offers before the start of school.

To summarize the benefits:

1. Applicants can use a single application for up to six schools at one low cost.
   
2. Members gain access to a vast alumni network of 22 schools, including mentorship from among the approximately 9,000 Consortium alumni (formal or informal).
   
3. Students gain access to corporate sponsors at orientation if selected as a member.
   
4. If selected as a fellow, students receive full tuition and a stipend.

READ: The Consortium Application: Tips for Your CGSM Essays >>

Consortium member schools

* School’s class profile presents a score/GPA range rather than an average.

To learn more about applying through The Consortium, please contact me for a consultation.

By Natalie Grinblatt, the former admissions dean/director at three top business schools. Natalie has reviewed more than 70,000 applications, interviewed more than 2,500 candidates, and trained nearly 700 admissions directors and alumni volunteers to select outstanding candidates for admission. Her clients gain admission to top programs, including those at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Cornell, Columbia, Berkeley, Chicago, Northwestern, and NYU. Natalie holds an MBA from Michigan Ross. Want Natalie to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• Top MBA Application Essay Questions: How to Answer Them Right
• The Consortium Application: Tips for Your CGSM Essays [2022 – 2023]
• What the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management Can Do for MBA Applicants – podcast episode 395

Can the Consortium Help You Get Accepted and Fund Your MBA? [Episode 532]

[powerpress]

In this episode, the Director of Recruiting at CGSM details the benefits – and opportunities! – available to Consortium members, what it takes to become a member, and why applying in Round One may not always be an applicant’s best strategy.  [SHOW SUMMARY]

There’s an organization that can help U.S. citizens and permanent residents get accepted to top MBA programs, fund their MBA, and even provide career support post-MBA – provided the applicants support the organization’s mission. Let’s learn all about it from the Consortium for the Graduate Study of Management’s (CGSM) Director of Recruiting.

An interview with Bianca Keys, director of recruiting at the Consortium for the Graduate Study of Management. [Show Notes]

Welcome to the 532nd episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me. 

Sometimes I’m asked, is the MBA worth it? And my answer is, it depends on your individual circumstances. But I’ve got good news. We’ve developed a tool that will help you evaluate whether an MBA is worth it for you and your individual circumstances and by how much. Just go to accepted.com/mbaroi and check how much you’re likely to benefit, or not, from earning an MBA. And using it won’t set you back even one cent, it’s free. 

I’m delighted for the first time on Admissions Straight Talk to talk with Bianca Keys, Director of Recruiting at the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Bianca earned her bachelor’s degree from Lindenwood University and her master’s in Business Management and Leadership from Webster University. She has worked in enrollment management, DEI training, and admissions in different capacities since 2008. She became CGSM’s Director of Recruiting in September 2022. 

Bianca, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk. [1:53]

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I’m delighted to do so. Now let’s start with something really, really basic. What is the Consortium? [1:59]

All right. So, the Consortium, we are pretty much an alliance of top graduate business programs and also top corporate partners, and we’re supported by alumni and students. We were founded in 1966 by Washington University’s professor, Sterling Schoen. And his one driven mission was actually inspired by him noticing a lack of African American men in leadership in American corporations.

So, with the partnerships of some corporate partners and some founding schools, they were able to pretty much create this alliance to give African American men the business skills to be able to secure positions in American corporations. So, now we’ve grown.

And I assume it’s no longer limited to African American men. It’s now African American men and women, right? [2:59]

Yes, men and women. And our target pops are African American men, Native American and Hispanic American, but our applications are open to all.

How does one become a CGSM member? [3:16]

In order to become a member, you would have to, of course, apply. And three of our requirements are that you must be a U.S. citizen or U.S. permanent resident of any race or ethnicity, you must demonstrate a commitment to our Consortium’s mission, and hold a four-year bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in the U.S. or equivalent. So, to be approved for Consortium membership, an applicant must demonstrate the commitment through their resume, our essay, and their letter of recommendation.

I have in front of me your mission, so I’m just going to read it off. “The mission of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, an alliance of leading American business schools and some of our country’s top corporations, is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to reduce the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in both the member schools’ enrollments and the ranks of management.” 

So, again, there’s no racial requirement in terms of membership as long as you support and identify with and support and have supported that mission in the past. [3:59]

Yeah.

All right. So, one of CGSM’S benefits is the ability to apply through CGSM and pay one application fee, and I think it goes to a maximum of six schools, correct? [4:33]

There’s no max anymore.

There’s no max anymore, ooh! [4:44]

So, two things, two updates. We’ve removed rankings. So, there are no rankings, and you can apply to as many member schools as you would like. So, from one to two schools is $150, up to six schools which is $300, but each additional program is $25. Yeah, so they can apply…

And so, in the past with our ranking system, the top ranking school, they were the only school that was able to offer a fellowship opportunity. And now if you applied to all six schools or more, they have the opportunity to offer you… they each have an opportunity to offer you a fellowship. And we empower the student to be able to make the better choice of what school best fits them.

Wow, that’s a big change. When did this change take place, like last year? [5:38]

This last application.

Last cycle. Should’ve interviewed you then. No, I’m teasing. That’s great news. I somehow missed that announcement. Okay, good to know. Good to know. So, there’s no more ranking and there’s no more maximum, and multiple schools could offer a fellowship. [5:43]

Yes.

Now you apply for membership at the same time that you submit your application, correct? [6:00]

Yes. It’s a one stop shop,

It’s a one-stop deal, one application. So, it is possible to use the CGSM application process and ultimately not be approved for CGSM membership, is that correct? [6:09]

Yes, that is possible. But the application is still considered an application, so you won’t get rejected from the member school just because you didn’t get membership. They still go through their standard process of admissions. And a lot of times they’ll offer you other fellowship opportunities or scholarship opportunities that they may have available at the schools.

And the schools don’t even see your decision in terms of CGSM membership. They don’t see the membership essay, correct, the membership application essay? [6:46]

They don’t see any of the membership application essays or letters of recommendation. All they see is the decision once we’ve made it.

Now I saw on your website that Stanford partnered with CGSM last year and became the 22nd school to become a partner school. Have any other schools partnered since then? [7:02]

Yes, I’m excited to say that…

Well, you got lots of news today. [7:17]

Yeah, I do. I do. Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, they are our newest, our 23rd school, which we are so excited to have them. They will begin July 1st, actually, and they will be on our application this upcoming cycle. And this upcoming cycle is for students fall 2024, that will begin fall 2024.

What is the benefit of applying through CGSM as opposed to just using the school’s portal? Portals, I should say. [7:45]

We, one, save you money. An average application for any grad program can be up to about $300 for one application, where six applications is $300 applying through us. So, it’s definitely a win for the students. Whether they get membership or not, it’s saving them money and they are allowed to go by our application deadlines as well. So, if maybe Columbia or one of the schools, maybe their application deadline may be September 15th, they still would recognize the application on our deadline, which our Round One is October 15th.

And I believe it’s also easier to apply. Aren’t there fewer essays required or is it pretty much the same at this point? [8:50]

Right, so it is the core essay which asks the applicants to discuss their MBA goals, and then there’s a second core essay that the applicants are able to detail any additional information that they may want to add that they weren’t able to explain in the application.

Right. And is there typically a supplemental per school essay, or do the schools ask for their own essays in addition to the Consortium essay? [9:20]

Sometimes they ask for their own supplementals that are added in addition. We are going through that process of application updates as we speak.

But it’s not all schools that do that? [9:38]

No, no. No, no.

Usually the student has the mission essay and then the two GMAC format essays.

Are you worried about CGSM’s applicants using ChatGPT and preparing their essays? [9:51]

Oh, the ChatGPT.

You got it. I’m asking everybody this question. [10:03]

And that’s a good question. So, with it being such a newer phenomenon right now, I just want applicants and students to be mindful that there are advantages and disadvantages to using ChatGPT, because what we’re looking for is consistency in their demonstrated commitment to the mission. And I doubt it if they’ll be able to convey that in an interview based off of a ChatGPT essay.

So, a lot of the admissions advisors and committees, they’re looking for authenticity. They’re looking for unique perspectives and their applicant’s ability to be able to express themselves. So, I don’t know if they can… It probably is a good tool to help guide them in forming their essay, but I don’t think it should be something that can express exactly your commitment.

I’ve played with it a little bit, and sometimes there are outright errors in it. It’s wrong. [11:09]

Right, right.

And other times it’s just very generic, and it has to be generic. You’re not going to get a lot of authenticity. But it does sometimes help. [11:17]

Yeah, yeah.

But to rely on it blindly I think is a big mistake. [11:28]

Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you don’t check.

Absolutely. Absolutely. [11:35]

Attention to detail.

Are there other elements to the CGSM application? We discussed you pay a fee. You have the core essays. You might have supplemental essays. Are there short answer essays or anything like that or is it pretty straightforward? [11:40]

Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward. If the school has any changes or supplements to each essay, that may be the different shift or change. But pretty much transcripts, resume. We always advise students to make sure that your experience, if you’re a part of organizations like Forte or MLT, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Teach for America, making sure that that’s actually on your resume. That definitely helps. Your test scores, GRE, GMAT or Executive assessment, letters of recommendation. One for the mission, and then there are two for the schools. Yes. And making sure you get the right recommender.

What makes a right recommender? [12:41]

Someone who can explicitly… Especially for the Consortium mission letter of recommendation, somebody who can explicitly pretty much show your demonstrated commitment to our mission and they know about that.

They’ve observed it. [13:01]

Yeah, they’ve observed it, and they can actually speak to it. And they’re not saying, “Well, I don’t know about their demonstrated commitment, but Jane is a great person and we love her personality. She’s very professional.” It’s like, what?

That’s not the question. [13:17]

So, definitely communicate with your recommender about expectations. And with us, it doesn’t have to be your supervisor with the Consortium mission letter of recommendation. It can be as long as it’s not a family member. It could be anyone who can speak to it.

That you’ve somehow supported that mission. Makes sense [13:40.

Yes.

What are the non-admissions benefits of being a CGSM member or fellow, and what is the difference between being a CGSM member and fellow? So, there’s really two questions there. Why don’t we start with the non-admissions benefits of membership, and then we’ll get to the difference between being a member and a fellow. [13:46]

So, the non-admission benefits are pretty much the early access to corporate partners. A lot of our students, we just had OP, our orientation program this past June, and it was amazing. It was amazing.

I know you’re working very hard on it. [14:20]

Yeah. Oh man, it was definitely a job, but it’s worth it. And just to see all of the students that we worked with from the beginning up until that point, from all their stress points, their pain points, to see them, they made it, and they’re at the orientation program. So, them having early access to our corporate partners.

They also have access to our system that is… We have a platform that is called Hello Fellow that allows them to join different groups that are industry groups. And our corporate partners have access to them as well, and they’re able to apply to positions that are open to those corporate partners.

Also, at our orientation program, we had a corporate open house that’s not like your traditional job fair. All of our corporate partners actually already had our students’ resumes, they already had a student look book, they’ve already seen the students and they already know the students prior to them even coming to the expo.

So, they definitely have a great advantage by being a Consortium fellow. And then the camaraderie, the support that they have with each other, there’s nothing like it. I love how each campus had… they call themselves CFAM.

Campus family, yeah. [15:53]

Yes. Each campus, each Consortium cohort on each campus, they’re so close. A lot of our alumni mention that the connection, that’s like a trending thing with us here at the Consortium is connection. Being able to connect students with not only each other, but also with our corporate partners and with our top MBA programs.

So, they have lifelong connections with all three of those different entities, and they enjoy being able to talk with someone who understands them, someone who may be going through the same even issues at their jobs or anything like that, and that connection. And if there’s a job loss or anything like that, we do provide the support to help those students to be able to reconnect with corporate partners and find another opportunity.

So, just to clarify, the orientation program is open to all Consortium members, not just fellows, correct? [16:54]

So, Consortium fellows, you’re applying for membership, but the membership allows you to become a Consortium fellow. So, whether you received a fellowship or not, you are considered a Consortium fellow.

So, you’re a Consortium fellow whether you get a scholarship or not? [17:16]

Right.

Got it. And all the fellows/members can go to the orientation program. How long is the orientation program? [17:26]

So, it’s a four-day conference, and it consists of a lot of hands-on career development. We have diversity theater, which is amazing. A lot of our corporate partners, they have private interviews with a lot of the students. So, a big portion of our students leave with internships or career opportunities.

For next year, for next summer, or for this summer? For next summer? [17:56]

Yes. For this upcoming year –

For summer 2024, let’s say? [18:03]

Yes.

And what is diversity theater? [18:06]

Oh my goodness, diversity theater. This was actually my first year to experience it. Hearing it from other coworkers and staff was not the same as experiencing and seeing those difficult conversations displayed on stage.

So, there’s actors that are on stage, and they may act out a scene where some coworkers that may deal with microaggressions or different challenges that you may face at work and how to address that, and just having those conversations amongst your peers. And it really was eye opening for not only the students, but for staff, for a lot of our corporate partners and admissions representatives as well. So, it was pretty amazing, and we have it annually as well.

And it seems like the orientation program is very much career oriented. Is there any prep for the actual study of the MBA, or is that assumed that the schools will handle that? [19:09]

So, the schools, the admissions representatives and career services representatives are present. So, they do have an advising session that they get to work with them and meet with them one-on-one for prep with the corporate partners, but also any questions that they have about the upcoming program that they’re about to start in the fall. They have all of that one-on-one time, a lot more one-on-one time than they would normally get during the school year.

Sounds like a very busy four days, very full. [19:54]

Yeah, it is very full.

Okay. How does CGSM help its fellows in career placement, both during and after the MBA? [20:00]

So, during the MBA, again, we have the Hello Fellow and our annual program, our annual orientation program and career forum. Like I mentioned before, they have the opportunity to interact with the corporate partners. The corporate partners get to review their resumes and their backgrounds early on before even meeting them face-to-face. Our alumni network, our Hello Fellow system, allows them to, again, engage with these corporate partners.

And then our student and alumni relations department, they are amazing with connecting with the students. They engage with student liaisons as well in providing that support that they may need throughout the year. And if there’s a student, like we just had tech layoffs recently. And our alumni development department, they were able to help and assist with reengaging with those students or those alumni to be able to help them to get placed in other career opportunities.

A few weeks ago you had the OP. It was mostly geared towards people starting the MBA in 2023, but it also had people who started the MBA in 2022. Is that correct? [21:18]

We had some second year. Like if something happened last year, I know dealing with the pandemic and other issues, some students were not able to attend last year, and so they were given the opportunity to attend this year.

But it’s usually just for the people about to start the MBA, the OP? [21:48]

Right, it’s usually first year students.

What do you see coming down the pike for the Consortium? [21:54]

Oh my goodness. Continued growth, continued engagement with a lot of the students. We’re working on increasing our exposure and engaging. This year we shared a lot of our OP activities on our social media and got a lot of good feedback and engagement. So, definitely I think we have a good momentum right now to be able to get all of the good things that we do at the Consortium out to the public and to the world.

What advice would you give to someone applying to apply via the Consortium in this, the 2023-2024 application cycle? [22:34]

Definitely begin your MBA journey. And beginning your MBA journey does not start with the application. It starts with the preparation.

Yes, that’s right. [23:13]

Definitely starts with the preparation. So, researching a lot of the schools that you’re interested in, finding out if you’re interested in the Consortium, finding out what that Consortium culture looks like on each campus to see what best fits you. Also, looking into preparation for GRE, GMAT, or the Executive Assessment and finding out what the class profiles are for each school that you’re interested in so you can have a good idea of where you stand. And don’t rush your application. Don’t rush it.

Yay! [23:54]

I always have some overzealous students that want to, “I’m getting it in for Round One.” Wait a minute. Make sure that you’re submitting the strongest application and that this is the right time for you to start a program. There’s no rush. There’s no rush. There’s no rush. Make sure you have the strongest application. Utilize all resources that you need to support you through your application process.

We always advise students to attend our events. We have member school webinars that are… We actually have one coming up on July 10th, which will have Washington University, University of Rochester Simon, and UCLA Anderson. And they will be talking about their MBA programs, but also talking about their Consortium cohorts on their campus as well.

And we also have our MBA application preparation seminars, which is MAPS, which will be in person this year. So, we will be in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and DC.

Wow. You’re getting around. [25:16]

Yes.

Not all Consortium schools require a test score. Does the Consortium require a test score even if the school does not? [25:21]

So, for membership we don’t require a test score. But if you are applying and they offer a test waiver, we would need to have that test waiver submitted, or you would need to submit that in the application. And then we just confirm it with the member school whether that test waiver was actually approved. Yeah. And then if it wasn’t approved, then they would have to submit a test score.

Are any of the programs or any of the partner schools entirely test optional? Do you know off the top of your head? I wasn’t sure as I was thinking about it. [26:03]

I don’t think so. Well, it depends on the school and what policies they have in place this upcoming school year.

I think most of them have a test waiver option, and I also would have to go through each one. [26:19]

Yeah. I always advise students to talk with them early about it, because last year I ran into the issue of students who just missed it. It was like they just missed the test waiver window. So, definitely talk with your school of interest to find out when that test waiver timeframe is and get that in if that’s an option for you.

Wonderful advice even if you’re not applying through CGSM, by the way. [26:51]

Right, absolutely.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [26:56]

These were all great questions.

What would you like to share that I haven’t asked? [27:02]

I would like to share just my… In my position as Director of Recruiting, what my passion and desire and vision is for the Consortium moving forward is to be able to expand our exposure to those who definitely need the opportunity, to be able to expand our exposure to those areas, because sometimes we are in this collegiate bubble.

Aacademia. [27:37]

Yeah, absolutely. And to be able to… We do so many great things.

You do. [27:45]

And just being able to see just the energy that I get from the students, just being around them, and just the positive nature of it all, being able to give that to others who don’t know about the Consortium. So, that’s my mission and goal is to increase exposure and to really share about the great things we’re doing here at the Consortium.

Well, today in this podcast, you did it. [28:14]

Thank you. Thank you, Linda.

You’re very welcome. Bianca, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about CGSM? [28:21]

They can check us online at www.cgsm.org or on our LinkedIn page and our Instagram page and on Twitter.

Relevant Links:

• The Consortium for the Graduate Study of Management
• Applying For Your MBA Through The Consortium: Best Deal In Town
• MBA ROI Calculator   

Relevant shows:

• How to Get an MBA at Columbia Business School – a podcast Episode 528
• How to Get Accepted to NYU Stern – a podcast Episode 525
• How to Get into Dartmouth Tuck – a podcast Episode 514
• How to Get Into Georgetown McDonough’s MBA Program – a podcast Episode 512
• How to Get Accepted to UNC Kenan-Flagler Full-Time MBA Program – a podcast Episode 496

Subscribe:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”iTunes-Widged”][xyz-ihs snippet=”Get-Stitcher”]   [xyz-ihs snippet=”Subscribe-on-Android”]

Podcast Feed

The post Applying for Your MBA Through The Consortium [Episode 532] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

U.S. STEM MBA Programs: An Overview

STEM certification programs have proven application bonanzas for top business schools. STEM certification may have begun pre-pandemic as a way to alleviate uncertainty in the visa process, but the programs have proven to be a robust inducement for MBA applicants, particularly from foreign countries. According to Poets & Quants, “At Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, the move to designate its entire MBA program STEM in early 2021 paid dividends this year. . . Its applications rose by an incredible 21%, an increase of 450 to 2,555, even though Cornell presumably felt the same domestic squeeze as its peer schools.”

[List of top STEM OPT U.S. Business Schools >>]

Cornell’s new MBA class has students from 43 countries, a dramatic rise from 30 countries from 2021. Cornell is receiving roughly double the number of international applications as domestic applications. Poets & Quants also reported strong upticks in foreign student enrollment among 27 B-schools surveyed: “In the top 10, the average gain was 10.2 percentage points, or 36.6%, with Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business the biggest by points — 18, or 72%, to 43% — and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania the biggest by percentage: 84.2%, or 16 points, to 35%.

“Across all 27 schools, the average gain from 2020 to 2022 was 14.6 percentage points, or 69%. The biggest gain was at CMU Tepper, which doubled its total from 28% to 56%; notably, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School gained 23.5 points, or more than 200%, to 35%. Three other B-schools more than doubled their international ranks in two years.”

Are you an international MBA applicant? We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW WE CAN HELP YOU GET ACCEPTED >>

The GMAC’s survey from 2019 was the first to inquire about a program’s STEM-certification, and found that these programs were more likely to report growth in international applicants. A total of 195 of the 804 U.S. programs responding reported that their programs were STEM-certified (24%). Among them, the most common program types were Master of Data Analytics (28%); Master of Finance (22%); and Master of Information Technology (14%). And while a majority of both STEM-certified (53%) and non-STEM (57%) programs reported declines in total applications during this period, STEM-certified programs fared better among international applicants. In the 2019-2020 academic year, 43% of STEM-certified programs grew their international applications, compared with 26% of non-STEM programs.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-selectivity-index-avg-GMAT”]

Given ongoing concerns over visa status and one’s ability to work in the U.S. after business school, programs that are STEM-certified are sure to be more appealing to this applicant pool.

While some MBA programs – such as Chicago Booth, Wharton, Virginia Darden – now offer specific concentrations that qualify international students for STEM OPT, others – such as Berkeley Haas, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, and Rochester Simon – qualify MBA graduates of all majors in their MBA programs for this extension.

During 2021, MBA programs have seen a rebound in international applicants, and many schools (NYU Stern, Darden, and Yale) are touting this return. Still, they are maintaining their STEM certifications because it will pave the way for their graduates to get jobs and stay in the U.S. long enough to pay off or pay down their loans. Despite its cost, the MBA degree continues to pay robust dividends right off the bat. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article: “At about 98% of universities that offer master’s of business administration programs, graduates typically made more money two years out of school than they had borrowed, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal student loan data for nearly 600 programs found.”

STEM MBA Programs

Name of MBA Program	Majors That Are STEM Designated	MBA Essay Tips
Arizona State Carey	All MBA Platforms	Tips
Babson MBA	1) Business Analytics and Machine Learning 2) Quantitative Finance	Tips
Berkeley Haas	All Majors	Tips
Brigham Young Marriott	Management Science and Quantitative Methods	Tips
Carnegie Mellon	All Majors	Tips
Chicago Booth	All MBA programs	Tips
Columbia Business School	MBA and EMBA programs	Tips
Cornell Johnson	1) Two-Year Management Science MBA 2) One-Year Management Science MBA 3) Tech MBA 4) MPS in Management 5) MPS in Management - Accounting Specialization	Tips
Dartmouth Tuck	STEM track	Tips
Duke Fuqua	Second Major in Management Science and Technology Management (MSTeM)	Tips
Georgetown McDonough	Management Science major	Tips
Harvard Business School	Management Science track	Tips
Indiana Kelley	Accounting, Business Analytics, Finance, Marketing or Supply Chain and Operations	Tips
Lehigh University College of Business	Business Analytics (a concentration within 1-MBA)	Tips
Michigan Ross	STEM track	Tips
MIT Sloan	MBAn	Tips
New York University	Tech MBA Two-year full-time MBA	Tips
Northwestern Kellogg	Management Science MMM Program for Dual Engineering/MBA Degrees	Tips
Notre Dame Mendoza	MBA/Master of Science in Business Analytics Dual Degree	Tips
Pace University	MBA in Information Systems	Tips
Purdue Krannert	MBA-STEM	Tips
Rice Jones	All MBA Programs	Tips
Rochester Simon	All Specializations	Tips
Rutgers	STEM designation	Tips
Stanford GSB	1) All MBA majors 2) MSx	Tips
Syracuse	FT MBA, M.S. in Business Analytics, MS in Finance, MS in Marketing and MS in Supply Chain Management	Tips
Texas McCombs	14 of the 22 concentrations for the full-time MBA program	Tips
University of California, Davis	All Majors	Tips
University of California, Irvine	Analytics in Digital Leadership concentration	Tips
University of California, Los Angeles	All Specializations	Tips
University of California, Riverside	All MBA Programs	Tips
University of California, San Diego	1) Full-time MBA 2) FlexEvening 3) FlexWeekend	Tips
University of California San Francisco	1) Financial Analysis, MS 2) Information Systems, MS 3) Full-Time MBA 4) Marketing Intelligence, MS 5) Energy Systems Management & MBA 6) Environmental Management & MBA (4+1), BS/MBA 7) Financial Analysis & MBA (4+1), BSBA/MS	Tips
University of Connecticut	1) Business Analytics 2) Digital Marketing Strategy 3) Financial Analysis and Investments	Tips
University of Delaware Lerner	Major in Business Analytics	Tips
University of Georgia Terry	Only open to U. of Georgia undergraduates; includes 45 majors	Tips
University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler	All MBA Programs	Tips
University of North Texas Ryan	MBA in Business Analytics	Tips
University of Washington Foster	Management Science	Tips
University of Wisconsin - Madison	1) Specialization in Operations and Technology Management 2) Supply Chain Management	Tips
USC Marshall	Specialization in Management Science	Tips
Vanderbilt Owen	Finance Concentration	Tips
Wharton	1) Business Analytics 2) Business, Economics & Public Policy (BEPP) 3) Business, Energy, Environment & Sustainability (BEES) 4) Operations, Information & Decisions (OID) 5) Quantitative Finance 6) Statistics	Tips
Washington University in St. Louis (Olin)	Full-time MBA	Tips

We’re going to do our best to keep this table current. However, please do not rely on this table; confirm the STEM designation yourself to make sure that the MBA programs you apply to really have that designation. And if you find out a school has attained STEM certification and is not on the list, please let us know by emailing blog@accepted.com.

If you would like to learn how to get into top MBA programs that offer STEM OPT eligibility and are a good fit for you, register for a free consultation with me. 

At Accepted, we’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs and look forward to helping you too! CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—WBR—Get-Accepted-to-Harvard”]

By Jennifer Bloom, admissions consultant at Accepted for 20 years and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW). She is an expert at guiding you to produce application materials that truly differentiate you from the rest of the driven applicant pool. If you would like help with your application, Jennifer can suggest a number of options that work with any budget. Want Jennifer to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• STEM Applicants: Why Your Statement of Purpose is So Important
• Top MBA Application Essays: How to Answer Them Right (school-specific essay tips)
• The Questions You SHOULD Be Asking – ANSWERED!, a podcast episode

The post Top STEM MBA Programs: A Comprehensive STEM-OPT Eligible List appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The first two Columbia EMBA essay questions ask you to project into the future, both near and long term – they address what you hope, plan, want, expect – and dream. The third essay question is a “getting to know you” question, it reflects the adcom’s interest in your well-roundedness.

In these essays, a potential pitfall, given the non-anecdotal questions, is to write generically, abstractly: ideas, thoughts, buzz words, admirable ideals/objectives, artistic critiques. However, even though not specified in the questions, grounding these essays in your experience – through anecdote and example – is the key to making them memorable and dynamic.

This approach will result in a vivid, distinctive, meaningful picture of your candidacy. Considering the scant opportunity to discuss past professional achievements in the essays, your resume carries all the more weight in the Columbia EMBA application – attend to it accordingly.

Columbia Executive MBA short-answer question

What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters maximum)
Examples of possible responses: 1) “Work in business development for a media company.” 2) “Continue my career within investor relations.” 3) “Launch a data-management start-up.”

As their examples show, a factual phrase or bullet will suffice; no need to use a whole sentence. Include key details with function and industry being the essential elements.

Columbia Executive MBA essay questions

Columbia EMBA essay #1

Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3-5 years, and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words)

This question helps you avoid a common, reflexive pitfall: summarizing your career before discussing goals. Yes, goals need a context – and a sentence (or two) upfront about your current situation can work as a launchpad for presenting your goals. CBS is always interested in your plans for achieving your goals as well as the goals themselves – a practical focus. In this case it’s asking you to specify your short-term goals (3-5 years). So, detail the role(s) you anticipate during these years: position, type of company, scope of accountability, what you want to accomplish, and why you want to pursue this path – this “why” will allow the readers to get excited about your goals.

Your longer-term “dream job” needs less detail and should of course reflect some reasonable trajectory from the earlier role. The phrase “dream job” instead of “long-term goal” plus “in your imagination” invites (even encourages) you to be open, to take a bit of a risk, show some heart. If it’s a dream job, it should be ambitious in a way that is meaningful and enticing to you. Make the reader feel your excitement.

There is no request to explain “why Columbia” in the question, but it would be fine to add a sentence or two about what is truly compelling to you about the program, if you have something thoughtful and insightful to say in this regard.

Columbia EMBA essay #2

Columbia Business School’s Executive MBA will challenge you by offering a rigorous academic experience, global exposure through the international seminar, and the opportunity to immediately apply what you learn to your career. How will you approach balancing the demands of the program with your professional and personal life while you are in school? (250 words)

Keep this essay concrete and practical. Discuss the accommodations you will make at work, such as delegating more, adjusting travel schedules, etc. Focus on the most significant two or three adjustments.

Also address how you will handle your personal responsibilities with this additional demand on your time and energy; include 1-2 specific changes (probably, sacrifices), e.g. acknowledging that you’ll have less time at the playground with your toddler or mentioning the support of your significant other.

If you’ve already successfully balanced school and working full time, describe how you did it. Nothing is better than actual evidence that you can juggle these concurrent demands.

Columbia EMBA essay #3

Tell us about your favorite book, movie or song and why it resonates with you. (250 words)

Columbia EMBA’s adcom wants to get to know you as a person, beyond all the professional success, career plans, and extracurricular initiatives. What better way than with this question? Its brevity teases, as it yields up a rich opportunity to present a formative experience. You might wonder,

• Should I approach it strategically or personally? 
  
  Both! Chances are you have several favorite songs (yes, you could write about a sonata or symphony or opera if you’re a classical music fan), books, movies. Identify some favorites and think about (a) what you have to say about them and (b) what they say about you. Which one best illuminates a relevant side of you that’s not apparent elsewhere in the application?
  
  
• I’m not a critic, how can I explain how it moves me? 
  
  Rather than explain, contextualize your passion for the book, movie, or song by anecdote and detail; make it a story! When did you first see/hear/read it? Where were you in your life, and what did you do/see/feel differently as a result of the experience? How has your response to it changed over time?
  
  
• Should it be something I read/saw/heard long ago, or something more recent? 
  
  Rule of thumb: The longer ago the experience is, the weightier it should be in your life to warrant discussion. If you read a book in high school that totally changed your perspective and subsequent actions/decisions or helped you understand yourself deeply, it’s fine to use something that old. Otherwise, stick to something more recent.

Final tip: “resonate with you” means now, today. Whatever you discuss, end with its ongoing meaning and relevance to your life.

Columbia EMBA essay #4 (Optional)

An optional fourth essay will allow you to discuss any issues that do not fall within the purview of the required essays. This does not need to be a formal essay. You may submit bullet points. (500 words)

This question enables you to explain anything that needs explaining (e.g., gap in employment, choice of recommender if not using a direct supervisor, etc.). As far as non-necessary points, read “between the lines” about not needing to be formal and having permission to use bullet points. The instructions imply that this isn’t the place to make a whole additional marketing point about your candidacy. Whatever you present, there should be a clear value to the information you’re sharing.

Columbia Executive MBA 2022-23 application deadlines for New York Saturday program (May 2023 entry)

Columbia Executive MBA 2022-23 application deadlines for New York Friday/Saturday program (August 2023 entry)

Source: Columbia Business School’s website

For expert guidance with your Columbia EMBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA and EMBA program and look forward to helping you too!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—SR—Ace-the-EMBA”]

Related Resources:

• School-Specific EMBA Application Essay Tips
• Executive MBA Essays: How to Make an Impact [Sample Essay]
• A Non-Traditional Applicant Accepted to the Columbia EMBA Program, a podcast episode

The post Columbia EMBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines [2022 – 2023] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Chicago Booth and Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) share the #1 spotlight in U.S. News’ Best Business Schools of 2023 rankings, released March 29.

The metrics for the rankings are based on career placement success, student excellence and qualitative assessments by experts. MBA rankings are studied voraciously by applicants, students, and alumni but remain controversial. 

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-Quiz”]

Notable changes this year

• Chicago Booth’s rise reflected improvements on several metrics: a class GMAT score up by six points to 730; an acceptance that fell by five points to 22.6%; a higher score by corporate recruiters that now matches Harvard and Wharton; and a spike in average salary and sign-on bonus for last year’s MBA grads of $7,300 to a record $180,144–the second-highest of any business school. (NYU Stern had the highest of all schools at $181,803.) Placement for the Class of 2021 jumped five points three months after graduation, at 96.4%. 
  
  
• Wharton’s acceptance rate dropped by 4.9 percentage points to 18.2% and their average GMAT score rose by one point. Wharton MBAs enjoyed a jump in average salary and signing bonuses by $6,600 to $179,692, the second-highest of all schools behind only Booth. Job placement three months after commencement moved up by 3.3 percentage points to 96.8%.
  
  
• Top-ranked schools continued to jostle for position, with some flagship programs rising and others falling. Stanford’s GSB dropped by three notches, tying with Kellogg (Northwestern) for #3. Harvard and MIT Sloan remain tied at #5–no change from last year. Yale University’s SOM notched its highest ranking ever at #7, with Columbia and Haas (UC Berkeley) nipping at its heels, sharing the #8 ranking. Yale’s rise stemmed from a six-point rise in its average GMAT score to 726; a drop of six percentage points on its acceptance rate to 23.6%; and a dramatic 8.8 percentage improvement on its placement rate three months after graduation to 94.1%.
  
  
• Harvard Business School’s fifth-place showing reflects a surprisingly low employment at graduation of 69.0%, lower than any other Top 10 school. Its placement rate three months after graduation was 92.3%, the second-lowest for a Top 10 program. And the average salary and bonus for Harvard’s MBAs last year was $172,774, lower than seven other U.S. business schools. Harvard lost out on other metrics as well, including a higher admit rate of 12.5%, up from 9.2% last year, and average GMAT and undergrad GPAs that were lower than many other competitors. 
  
  
• Ross (University of Michigan) ascended into the Top 10 from #13, while Tuck (Dartmouth College) dropped to #11. Stern (NYU) and Fuqua (Duke University) share the #12 spot. Many other programs in the top 25 leaped forward, including Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, rising five places to #21 and Mendoza College of Business (Notre Dame) gaining 11 places to rank 25th. 
  
  
• Outside the Top 25, Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis rose seven spots to #29 and the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business rose eight positions to place #47.

While U.S. News had dropped standardized test scores from its online MBA ranking earlier this year, it kept the average class GMAT and GRE scores in its formula for the full-time program rankings. 

The rankings were based on a survey of all 493 institutions with master’s-level business programs in the U.S. accredited by AACSB International. A total of 363 survey recipients responded; the final rankings are based on 134 business schools that provided enough data on their full-time MBA programs and had large enough 2021 graduating classes seeking employment for valid comparisons. The rankings also include some programs conferring degrees such as Master of Science in Management and Master of Science in Industrial Administration.

U.S. News 2023 Top 10 Full-Time MBA Programs

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Selectivity-Index-MBA–Button”]

U.S. News 2023 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs

Hoping to start business school in 2023 at one of these top-ranked programs? Check out our MBA Admissions Consulting & Editing Services and work one-on-one with an expert consultant to create an application that will get you ACCEPTED!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—SR—Guide-to-selecting-right-one”]

Related Resources:

• Do MBA Rankings Matter?
• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths
• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?
• Financial Times Ranks Wharton as #1
• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know

The post U.S. News MBA Rankings 2023 [Full-Time & Part-Time] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The Financial Times has released its global rankings of the best MBA programs and has considerably shuffled the deck. Several top-ranked programs fell several notches, while others rose considerably. For the first time since 2011, Wharton has returned to its status as #1 in FT’s list. 

Other programs that made giant strides in the rankings include Columbia Business School (ranked 8th in 2020), and Kellogg (Northwestern), now #5 (11th place in 2020). One reason for such huge fluctuations was that five of the top U.S. programs (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, and Columbia) were not listed at all last year at all, skewing that year’s results. 

Other highly rated programs that suffered serious tumbles in the rankings include London Business School, Tuck (Dartmouth), and UVA Darden. In fact, 69 of the 91 schools ranked fell in the rankings, many of them by double digits.  

Compared with last year, many of these schools’ rankings looked like riders on a roller coaster, with some plunging far below and others rising by as much as 20 points to unprecedented heights. 

As we have cautioned before, it’s vital to keep these rankings in perspective. They are based on many variables that have little or nothing to do with the quality of the curricula per se.

Do you see yourself in one of these top programs? Find out how working one-on-one with one of our Admissions Consultants can help get you ACCEPTED!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—SR—Guide-to-selecting-right-one”]

Related Resources:

• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths
• Top MBA Programs Get STEM-Certified to Attract Int’l Students
• B-School Selectivity Index: Discover the Schools Where You are a Competitive Applicant

The post Financial Times Ranks Wharton as #1 in 2022 Rankings appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Most grad students take out student loans to finance their higher education and can end up saddled with debt running into hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time they graduate. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal student loan data for nearly 600 programs, graduates of approximately 98% of universities that offer MBA programs usually made more money two years after graduation than they had borrowed. Contrast this with law schools, where approximately 6% of programs had grads with higher median salaries than debt for the same time period.

There are many reasons that students pursue an MBA – the promise of a significantly higher salary, the ability to enter a new industry, or the pursuit of an executive track to name a few. However, the high cost of getting an MBA, which can range from $100,000 to $250,000 or more after living expenses are added to tuition and fees, can be enough to change many potential students’ minds. Despite the relatively low-interest federal loans available to grad students, the amount that students can borrow is fixed at $41,000, leaving some students with no choice but to take out additional higher-interest (but unlimited) Grad Plus loans. So it is encouraging to potential MBA applicants to see that what has long been thought of as a “no-brainer investment” does essentially pay off.

However, there are other factors which skew the data somewhat. There have been efforts to diversify the applicant pool for business schools, yet a significant proportion of MBA applicants still enter programs with professional experience, often in finance or other high-earning industries, thereby accelerating their career paths and making the post-MBA cohort a financially healthy group. Moreover, the data in the Wall Street Journal’s analysis reflects federal government loan programs and does not include private loans.

Not everyone who graduates with an MBA sees significant increases in salary. According to Paulo Goes, dean of Tulane business school, 2020 grads have had an especially difficult time since a lot of companies stopped recruiting MBA graduates during the pandemic. The impact of this slow-down is seen in graduates’ placements and salaries.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-Quiz”]

For-profit business schools had a lower rate of students who repaid their loans after two years. Strayer University in Washington, DC had 2% of students fully repay their loans during the two-year period following graduation, with about 33% asking to temporarily stop payments. Strayer students borrowed a median of $74,000, but half of the grads earned less than $57,000 two years post-graduation.

Approximately a dozen other business schools revealed median debt loads that were greater than grads’ median salaries. Several schools stated that this is because students attended their expensive dual-degree programs. Roseman University of Health Sciences reported the highest debt to earnings of any program, with students borrowing a median of $172,000.

Even so, there is much to be gleaned from the data that would make an MBA worth the time and investment. Analysis shows that at several elite programs, including Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the median starting salary after graduation permitted more than half of grads to pay off their federal student loan debt within two years. 

Interestingly, some of the most expensive MBA programs had some of the lowest debt load. Graduates of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business borrowed a median of $41,000 in federal loans without turning to more expensive Grad Plus loans. Harvard Business School graduates had a median of $41,000 in debt, and median salaries of about $172,000. According to Chad Losee, Harvard’s managing director of MBA admissions, approximately 56% of the class of 2020 graduated with some debt, averaging $79,000 in combined federal and private loans. 

As Poets & Quants points out in its analysis of the Journal’s article, earnings are a reflection of the graduate’s chosen industry and the job’s location. Harvard reported a record pay year with 7% of the latest class taking positions in hedge funds and investment management jobs. The median total compensation for last year’s grads was $203,307, including a median salary of $152,682, sign-on bonuses of $27,500 reported by 54% of grads, and $132,500 in other guaranteed compensation reported by 27% of grads.

It is also worth noting that business schools have been increasing the number of scholarships they award to students over the last decade. Harvard distributes scholarships to defray the cost of its MBA program, distributing $40 million in fellowships to its MBA students last year. Approximately half of the enrolled students received scholarships averaging more than $42,000 per student in fiscal 2020.

P&Q top 10 business schools debt-income ratio

There seems to be much reassurance in the data that an MBA from a top school will indeed open doors to a lucrative career and allow one to pay off debts sooner than other programs.

Are you considering an MBA to maximize your earning potential? The stats show that the investment is worth it, but it takes an outstanding application to impress the elite schools. Our experienced MBA admissions consultants work with you one-on-one, throughout the process, to help you get ACCEPTED!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Accepted-Sig-Code—MBA”]

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-Quiz”]

Related Resources:

• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?, a podcast episode
• Top MBA Application Essays: How to Answer Them Right
• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths

The post MBA Students Pay Off Student Loans Faster Than Other Grad Degrees appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The U.S. News 2023 ranking is now live! Click here to check it out >>

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-Quiz”]

U.S. News has just released its 2022 rankings of the best full-time and part-time MBA programs. The rankings are based on surveys sent out to the 486 business schools with master’s-level business programs in the US, accredited by AACSB International. 

According to Poets & Quants, unlike the Economist and the Financial Times, only the U.S. News list ranks all the major U.S. business schools. All the M7 business schools opted out of the Economist’s ranking, and five of the M7 chose not to participate in the Financial Times ranking. 

Of the 486 business schools that received surveys, 364 replied, and 143 supplied sufficient data and had large enough 2020 graduating classes looking for employment for valid comparisons. Schools were ranked in eight areas. The data collected was standardized in order to compare them with the mean and standard deviations of other schools. U.S. News weighted and added the indicator standardized scores (z-scores) and gave the top school a score of 100. The remaining schools received a percentage of the highest score. The final ranking is in descending order based on these scores. MBA specialties were also ranked again this year.

[Read: Do MBA Rankings Matter?]

Highlights of the 2022 MBA Ranking

These were some of the significant changes in the full-time MBA rankings: 

• Stanford University and University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) retained their first and second place rankings this year. Stanford was able to do this despite dropping in four of the specialty MBA rankings. 
  

• Harvard Business School crept up to fifth place from last year’s sixth, which was its lowest position ever in the U.S. News ranking. 
  

• Dartmouth College (Tuck) advanced two spots and unseated New York University (Stern) to take the number ten spot.
  

Part-time business school rankings also showed some movement:

• University of Chicago (Booth), University of California, Berkeley (Haas), and Northwestern University (Kellogg) maintained their leading spots in the top three positions. 
  

• Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) (eighth last year) and University of Texas, Austin (McCombs) (seventh last year) exchanged places and share the seventh spot.
  

• Indiana University (Kelley) is a newcomer to the top ten this year, taking the spot from Emory University (Goizueta).

U.S. News 2022 Top 10 Full-Time MBA Programs

U.S. News 2022 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs

Hoping to start business school in 2022 at one of these top-ranked programs? Check out our MBA Admissions Consulting & Editing Services and work one-on-one with an expert consultant to create an application that will get you ACCEPTED!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Accepted-Sig-Code—MBA”]

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—SR—Guide-to-selecting-right-one”]

Related Resources:

• The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Competitive MBA Applicant, a free guide
• Business School Selectivity Index [Can I Get Into My Dream School?]
• Do MBA Rankings Matter?

The post U.S. News MBA Rankings 2022 [Full-Time & Part-Time] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Our recent webinar, Get Accepted to Columbia Business School, was full of actionable insight on how to elevate your application and increase your chances of acceptance. If CBS is at the top of your wish list, you can’t afford to miss this. Watch the video now!

Watch the webinar:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Accepted-Sig-Code—MBA”]

The post Looking for an Edge on Your CBS Application? appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Video transcript

“What do schools want? The essay questions seemed random.” This is a very common question and comment that I get from applicants trying to deal with their MBA applications. And while it’s a very common reaction and question, I also think it’s somewhat of an erroneous one. I’d like to go through Columbia Business School’s essay questions. And I think if we go through them together, you’ll see that they’re really designed so that each essay introduces a different facet of you to the reader. And that’s what every essay in any MBA application should do.

Understanding CBS essay #1

Let’s dive into Columbia’s MBA application. It starts with a very short question, maximum of 50 characters: “Briefly define your immediate post-MBA goal.” In response, you need to be specific, succinct, and concrete. What do you want to do and in what industry do you want to do it? Essay one, “Through your resume and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years? And what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job?” And you have 500 words for this essay, quite a bit better than 50 characters.

<< Columbia Business School MBA Class Entering 2020 Profile >>

Well, first of all, it’s very clear that Columbia does not want you to rehash what’s elsewhere in the application, which all deals with past experiences and events: your resume, your transcript, letters of recommendation. This essay has a strictly future focus, and it has nothing to do with your immediate post-MBA job, which you already discussed in that short answer question. What they want to know is your three to five year job and your long-term dream job. And by using that term, in your imagination and dream job, they’re really inviting you to dream and aspire as well as think longer term. And when you think in terms of that long-term dream job, don’t just think in terms of the title you want to hold or the address you want to have on your resume or anything like that, think about what you hope to accomplish in that particular role or function or with that title, because that’s what Columbia is much more interested in. This was made very clear by Michael Robinson in an Ask Me Anything that Accepted recently hosted for Columbia. So, that’s essay number one.

Understanding CBS essay #2

“Why do you feel Columbia Business School is a good fit for you?” 250 words. This is nothing about post-Columbia. This is all about your time at Columbia. Why is Columbia a good fit for you? Why do you want to attend Columbia Business School? Well, first of all, think about what makes a great MBA program for you. It shouldn’t be about rank. After all, there are seven schools in the M7, there are 10 schools in the top 10. They want to know why… Well, again, the first question is what makes a great MBA program for you; it should be about the education it’s going to provide, the opportunities it’s going to provide, the extracurricular events that you can partake of. And then, fundamentally, how will it help you achieve your short- and long-term goals?

So in order to answer that question, number one, you need to know a lot about Columbia’s program. Specifically, you need to know about its educational program, the actual curriculum, extracurricular opportunities, and its recruiting strengths. Also keep in mind, Columbia’s focus on intersectionality or intersection, period. It’s at the intersection of theory and practice, the intersection of arts and business, being in New York city, the business capital, arguably, of the world. And of course, Manhattan may not be an entrepreneurial capital of the world, but it’s certainly an entrepreneurial hotbed. So that centrality that it’s taking advantage of is important to it. And you should be prepared to tie some of those opportunities that it presents to achievement of your goals. Again, two things need to know: Columbia really well, and what makes it a great MBA program for you in terms of achieving your career goals. In terms of the personal happiness part that I mentioned, I think that’s relevant, but the bulk of the essay is going to focus on the professional.

Understanding CBS essay #3 

“Tell us about your favorite book, movie, or song and write why it resonates with you.” 250 words. This is a real getting to know you question. They want to see how you think. Your reasoning is far more important than what you choose in terms of which song, book, or movie. 

So they’ve gotten to know you through your essay three. They get to know about your future in essay one. And they get to know why Columbia resonates with you in essay two. Look at how the application fits together. Those first two essay questions, the real short one and the 500 word one, are about the future you see for yourself, so Columbia Business School can assess if it can really help you achieve your goals and if you need a Columbia Business School MBA.

The second question is about your fit with Columbia and in the Columbia Business School community. And the third question is a getting to know you question, more about how you as a human being and as an individual think and respond to different books, movies, and songs. Each question is designed to elicit an answer that complements the information found elsewhere in the application, as well as the other essays. And it lets them get to know you a little bit better. And that’s exactly what we help our clients do in their MBA applications and what we’d love to help you do as well.

Getting into Columbia Business School takes a special combination of an outstanding application, an extraordinary essay, and an incredible interview. Check out our MBA Services Packages to work one-on-one with our expert admissions consultants. We can help you GET ACCEPTED!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—WBR—Get-Accepted-to-CBS”]

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Signature—LINDA”]

Related Resources:

• Get Accepted to Columbia Business School, a free webinar
• Columbia Business School MBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines
• The Applicants That Stand Out at Columbia Business School

The post Columbia MBA Essays: Tips for a Successful Application [Video] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

My observation as a former insider at CBS is that Columbia is looking to build a diverse class of high-achieving world citizens who’ve got a bit of grit.

World citizen

What do I mean by a world citizen? For a small fraction, it means applicants who are internationally famous due to their own achievements or by association. Let’s say, the guy who won an Olympic medal, or the gal who gets a call from the former president of “X” country and says, “Hi, Dad.”

A world citizen also means someone who will add their own confident, distinct vibe to a cosmopolitan student body. Columbia wants to admit people with strong intellects and big ideas. They want confidence, but not arrogance. They like people who thrive in large group settings and don’t need a lot of handholding. They’re looking for admits with resilience and who exude a joie-de-vivre – kind of like the city itself.

The greatness of grit

And what do I mean by grit? That means someone who has achieved extraordinary things in the context of his or her job. It’s someone who has mapped out a plan for his or her future, and has done the hard work of really getting to know Columbia’s program and can prove it’s a good fit.

It can also mean someone who doesn’t have good test scores or a glossy international background. But that person (usually a New York local) builds a relationship with an adcom member (though is not annoying!), retakes tests and makes efforts to improve at work or have an impact in the community. He or she might have to reapply, but showing that grit can eventually mean an admit.

The New York connection

Finally, Columbia is looking for that New York connection. Why this city? Do you know what it has to offer? Can you thrive in its hyper-competitive business scene? Have you ever lived or worked here? A campus visit can be a huge plus–confirming for the adcom that you’re serious about attending.

New York can break your heart, or fulfill your wildest dreams. It will absolutely affect your experience at Columbia. They want to know you’ve got the right stuff to make the most of it.

For one-on-one assistance with your Columbia Business School application, work with an expert advisor! Check out our MBA Admissions Services to get started.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Signature-Code—Michelle”]

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-WBR-AMA-with-CBS”]

Related Resources:

• Get Accepted to Columbia Business School, a free webinar
• Columbia Business School MBA Application Essay Tips & Deadlines
• How to Project Professionalism, Positivity, and Confidence in Your Statement of Purpose

The post The Applicants That Stand Out at Columbia Business School appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Our recent AMA session with Columbia Business School Director of Admissions Michael Robinson was an illuminating peek behind the scenes of the admissions decision-making process. 

In addition, his answers to attendees’ questions provided deep insight into how applicants can improve their chances of acceptance to this elite program. If you’re hoping to apply to CBS this year, make sure you check it out. It’s available for free, on-demand viewing, so watch it now!

Watch the AMA:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Accepted-Sig-Code—MBA”]

The post Got Your Sights Set on CBS? Watch This Video Now! appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

[powerpress]

What’s it like to be a student at a top business school during COVID-19? [Show summary]

Eli Engelman, member of the Columbia Business School Class of 2021, shares his experience applying to and matriculating at Columbia’s MBA program, including how his experience has been shaped by COVID-19.

A CBS student reflects on his b-school experience so far [Show notes]

Are you wondering if an MBA moved online is a valuable experience? Or are you less worried about how your education will be delivered and more worried about getting into an elite MBA program when you didn’t necessarily attend a college with an Ivy League pedigree? Our guest today will address both those topics.

Eli Engelman grew up outside of New York city and decided after a stint in the Israeli army to attend the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, where he earned a BA in finance and minored in philosophy and computer applications and business. After interning at Bank Leumi, he joined the bank full time in 2016 and worked there until he joined Columbia Business School’s Class of 2021.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [1:52]

I grew up in Monsey, New York, which is about 45 minutes north of the city. I attended a local high school and upon graduating, I decided that I wanted a little bit of an interesting experience in life. And so I moved to Israel to study abroad and join the Israeli Defense Force. And after three years in Israel, I decided to return to New York, this time Manhattan. I wanted to position myself at the center of business and to pursue a degree at Baruch College. Like you said, I majored in finance and minored in computer information systems and philosophy. And I had a wonderful internship at Bank Leumi, which is Israel’s largest investments bank, and I decided to join them full-time. I loved the idea of being at the intersection of business, as well as that international experience that being at an Israeli bank afforded me. And at Leumi, I was a member of both the portfolio strategy and alternative investment teams. For fun, I love to read, I love to snowboard, hike and travel, and discovering different cuisines is a favorite pastime of mine.

Your undergraduate degree is in business. You have four and a half solid years of experience at an international bank. Why did you decide you wanted or needed an MBA? [3:11]

There are three primary reasons. I think there are actually many more, but the three that spring to mind are the fact that at Leumi, I got a really broad experience and I thought it was very important that starting out, I would focus more on the breadth than the depth of my experience, just to see what I would like. And I worked on public markets and private markets, and the private markets were really interesting to me. I hoped an MBA would allow me to leverage what I learned at Leumi and provide me a platform to focus my skill on that particular discipline.

The second was that I wanted to just surround myself with ambitious, hardworking peers who I could learn so much from, and that’s really come to fruition in a profound way.

And the third and perhaps most important, and one that you’re less likely to hear in general, is that life is short and I wanted to diversify my experience as much as I possibly could. I wanted to live as interesting a life as I could, and I thought an MBA would be a great way to take a two year break from “real life” and explore and see what’s interesting to me and hear different perspectives, and that was very enticing.

Do you remember anything particularly challenging about the MBA application process for you? [4:53]

What was the most challenging thing to me on my application was also the thing I thought would be the least challenging, which was my resume. I originally assumed that my resume’s purpose is to highlight responsibilities, essentially to showcase the faith that Leumi or the companies I worked for in my internships had in me. But Natalie from Accepted, who was absolutely instrumental in getting me into the various programs that I did and helping me along my MBA search journey, quickly checked me on this and explained to me that the real value of a resume is as a marketing tool and a medium to tell my story. I then had to extricate my successes from my responsibilities, really highlighting the successes as opposed to the responsibilities.

That was actually challenging because I had the words on the paper. I had the resume. I thought it was good to go. Instead of building it from scratch, which might’ve been easier, if I had that focus on success, I had to revamp it. And once I began to think about the resume as a narrative with a beginning, a middle and end, and I started to think about how one instance of success led to another, I put that on paper, completely revamped my resume, and that helped tremendously. I saw a difference in the interviewers that I had in admissions. People would look at it, and they’d look up at me as though they learned something; there was something there that they can talk about. So that was really excellent and a challenge, which I’m very happy to have had Natalie’s help to overcome.

What do you like most about Columbia, pre-COVID? [6:54]

Being with my cluster. Really, that’s an easy one to answer for me. At CBS, we call cohorts clusters, and Cluster B just exceeded all my expectations. We do it by the alphabet, and I was in Cluster B, and the people are diverse and intelligent and most importantly generous. There’s no substitute for in-person experience, obviously, but it’s amazing to see how even in this time, my cluster is coming together virtually constantly, despite COVID, the social turmoil, and time zones. It’s incredible. And we regularly have virtual events, check-ins, support groups, and I can’t wait for these things to be done in-person. To your point about time zones, we have people from Korea calling in, we have people from Maui calling in, and from everywhere in between.

Regarding the pre-COVID experience, what would you have liked to see improved at Columbia? [8:09]

The facilities. I think aesthetics are extremely important, in that a building should be a reflection of the kind of work you expect to achieve within. When a student walks into a beautiful, naturally lit, open plan building, which I saw many of during my MBA explorations, I think there was a different atmosphere. People were inspired to open up, to collaborate, to innovate. When you walk into the Soviet-style bunker (I hoped Dean Maglaras isn’t going to listen to this) that is Uris Hall (put up, by the way, under protest from the neighboring architecture school), the first instinct is to feel a little restricted and gloomy. I can rant about this for an hour, but there’s a new building in the works. It looks amazing. It should be completed next year. And I’m really excited to attend the events there and maybe participate in some continuing education.

How was your adjustment to online learning, social distancing, and sheltering in place? And how on earth did you manage to pull this off in Hawaii? [9:31]

Originally, I had worked for months and months with a team of students to bring 150 CBS students to Israel for spring break to experience the social and business culture there. Obviously, that fell through at the last second due to COVID. But one of the attendees who was on the trip asked me if I would like to join him for a week in Maui, so I’m talking to you three months later from Maui. I’m still here. And I thank him for his generosity, let me tell you.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-WBR-COVID-19″]

In terms of social distancing, it actually made life very easy. I’m very fortunate. I’m here with my wife and seven other CBS students, and so the loneliness associated with social distancing and sheltering in place was never really an issue. I’m very thankful for that. I’ve always been a “quality over quantity of relationships” guy anyway. Exploring my relationships and deepening my relationships with these people has been tremendous.

In terms of virtual learning, we use Zoom. Nothing special about it. It was a little bit weak. It’s not great; it is what it is. We understood that the school had to pivot very quickly but didn’t have the resources to do it in a way that might’ve benefited us a little more in terms of collaborating virtually and interacting with the professor virtually.

The quality of lecture-oriented classes, I found, weren’t really hit. Capital markets and investments, for example, the quality was barely diminished, but I can’t say the same for collaborative classes. We had these unbelievable classes led by industry leaders and things like Think Bigger which was sort of an iterative thinking process in which you collaborate with people to your left and right constantly in the classroom, and we couldn’t do that virtually nearly as easily. And then we had classes like organizational change, which were also highly collaborative. Unfortunately, I decided to really stock up on those classes over the last semester before her COVID, and so that wasn’t great, but I think CBS did its best. And the next time learning from home is required, they’ll be much better equipped to deal with these things.

Other than spending several months in Hawaii, are there other silver linings for you regarding remote education? [12:34]

Flexibility is a big one. We have people who are able to dial in from any location; I think that’s important. I think a lot of people got to spend more time with family than they otherwise would have. You’re able to work simultaneously while taking courses. I understand that those are benefits on paper, but that’s certainly not what I signed up for. And I’m just the kind of person that prefers being onsite to the extent that I don’t really see those things as much of a benefit, but I do understand that a lot of people can benefit tremendously from that.

So much of the MBA is extracurricular or co-curricular. Do you feel that you lost out during the last three months in terms of those activities, or was there at least partial success in transferring that online? [13:39]

I think a mix of both. I definitely miss participating in club events and interacting with classmates in person, going out with them and being able to just turn around to a professor and spontaneously ask a question, sort of tapping on the shoulder. That was the reason that I decided to attend the full-time program, and I really do miss those aspects of the experience that I really hoped for.

Are the things that you’re missing serious enough that you wish you hadn’t started your MBA in the summer of 2019? [14:28]

Right now, I can unequivocally say no. Thankfully, we’ve only experienced this virtual world for half a semester, but any longer and my answer may well be different. I spoke to a prospective on the phone, and we still didn’t know whether we’ll be on campus or not in the next semester, and I recommended that they defer. I said, you’re not signing up for part-time. You’re not signing up for virtual. You’re signing up for full-time, and you should take advantage of that. Obviously, his specific circumstances were such that he was unfortunately given a timeline to be let go, and so he’s going to matriculate, but to those people who have the opportunity to wait until, with a high degree of certainty, classes will resume as normal, I would say defer.

How are you spending your summer between the first and second year of business school, professionally? [15:38]

I’m fortunate yet again. The digital media/private equity firm that I’m interning with is based in Manhattan and because they’re in the digital media space, they are actually doing quite well despite COVID, and they didn’t have to make any adjustments to the length of my internship or salary. And I know a lot of my classmates are suffering as a result of changes made by their firms, and we’re, as a matter of fact, in the midst of acquiring two new companies with more deals on the horizon. So it’s been a really great time. I’ve been working on due diligence and forecasting and strategy. I’ve been having a blast and learning a ton. You have the same downsides you do to not being in-person in the MBA program in terms of collaboration in person, etc. But by and large, especially now that we’re used to having three months of virtual programming, it feels much more like second nature than it did to make the transition from in-person to online for the MBA program.

What are your plans for the second year of your MBA program? [16:58]

In my second year, I hope to be more involved in extracurriculars. I’m quite involved right now, but I’d really like to take it to the next level in terms of leadership in clubs. I joined the Board of The Rugby Association, for example. That and the wine club, entrepreneurship through acquisition on the professional side, the VC club. Those are the ones that I’m most interested in. And things like company visits, I’m really hoping to take advantage of next semester. And I’d like to focus a little bit more on those classes that are around investments and entrepreneurship.

What are your plans for the future after your MBA? [17:48]

We were talking about this earlier, how COVID really subverts plans, and global pandemics can change the way you think about having a structured plan. And so I think in my life in general, I’ve carved out a path but have never been too myopic about the goal. And so I’d like to work in investments in some capacity at a serious firm or spend time searching for an interesting business to acquire. Like I said, I’m interested in entrepreneurship through acquisition, but I’m going to continue to work hard, keep my options open, and capitalize on a great opportunity when one arises.

Is there anything you would have liked me to ask you? [18:33]

Maybe what life is like at CBS for partners, or as we say at CBS, “better halves.” Sally, my wife, was at the school of Public Health at Columbia, so she had a little bit of a taste of the graduate school experience, but nothing compares, I think, to the MBA experience when it comes to things like extracurriculars and the social side of it. And to say that she’s been welcomed with open arms is a massive understatement. When people see me, they say, “Eli, where’s Sally?” And when I say she’s not going to be here, they sort of grunt a little and walk away. She’s definitely the better half here. And they have a great support system for better halves through the better half community. That’s both on Slack and email. They have events, and they’re really well-connected. Better halves are able to participate in just about everything at the school programmatically. Sally has reached out to professors about auditing classes, and it’s always welcomed unless there’s absolutely no room in the class physically. She’s had a wonderful experience. She’s been looking more at the investment side of healthcare and has leveraged a lot of the relationships that she’s built through me at Columbia business school to take advantage of that opportunity.

Is there any place where somebody who wants to contact you can do so?

They could look me up on LinkedIn under Eli Engelman, and I’m happy to reply to any questions about the MBA program or the search.

Related Links:

• Columbia Business School MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2020 – 2021]
• Eli’s Journey to Columbia B-School and His Passion for Being at the Very Center of Business
• MBA Deadline Updates: How Will COVID-19 Affect the MBA Application Process?
• How Will COVID-19 Impact Your Admissions Journey: 5 MBA Admissions Experts Speak
• Linda Abraham and Al Dea Discuss COVID-19 and MBA Admissions
• Accepted MBA Admissions Services

Related Shows:

• Thriving in Medical School, in Business School, and as a Professional Athlete
• Entrepreneurship at HBS: How Stride will Help You Fund Your Future
• A Non-Traditional Applicant Accepted to the Columbia EMBA Program
• MBA, Private Equity, Cop: Meet Nik Kumar, Columbia MBA 2019

Subscribe:

[xyz-ihs snippet=”iTunes-Widged”][xyz-ihs snippet=”Get-Stitcher”] [xyz-ihs snippet=”Subscribe-on-Android”]

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA—WBR—Get-Accepted-to-CBS”]

Podcast Feed

The post An MBA’s Perspective on Columbia Business School [Episode 373] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

During this unprecedented time of global disruption, it’s natural to feel anxious. The MBA application process is daunting in the best of times, and all the more so when factoring in a pandemic. However, you don’t have to navigate this alone; there are people who have the answers, and they are here to guide you!

Last month, our special webinar geared towards MBA hopefuls looking for answers in these unsteady times was so helpful that we decided to offer you another chance to engage with the professionals and assuage your fears! That’s why Accepted will be hosting Assistant Dean of Admissions Amanda Carlson from Columbia Business School for a live Q&A session on Thursday, April 30 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET. 

This session, How Will COVID-19 Impact Your MBA Admissions Journey? is totally free, but spots are limited, so you must register to participate. Sign up today!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Accepted-Sig-Code—MBA”]

The post Could COVID-19 Derail Your MBA Dreams? appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

With the unprecedented reality of a worldwide pandemic, it is reasonable to be concerned about the MBA admissions process. Universities have emptied out their campuses, and both students and teachers are rapidly trying to adjust to remote learning and a host of other modifications in traditional education. Additionally, job prospects are dwindling as the economy dips and layoffs begin. The lack of clarity around MBA programs with deadlines in summer 2020 or fall 2020 can be anxiety-provoking, so here at Accepted, we want to provide you with the best guidance possible as you consider your application options.

You’ll find below a roundup of MBA deadline extensions and changes. Check back soon for more advice and insight into pursuing an MBA during the current health crisis.

<< How Will COVID-19 Impact Your Admissions Journey? [Watch the Webinar] >>

Surveying the deadlines

Here’s what you need to know: [Please note that this list is not all-inclusive, and that the schools listed below may change their policy again in response to change circumstances; please check school websites for updates.]

Chicago Booth

The Chicago Booth Round 3 deadline remains April 2, 2020. However Booth will continue to accept applications through May 31, 2020 with decisions released on a rolling basis.

For all Round 3 applicants, test scores can be submitted as late as July 1, 2020. Admissions decisions will not be made until the score is received.

Check out Chicago Booth’s website for more information.

CMU Tepper

CMU Tepper is waiving application fees through July 31st and is accepting applications on a rolling basis from June 1 – July 31, 2020. They are also allowing applicants with “robust quantitative backgrounds” to apply without a GMAT or GRE. (They will need to meet other requirements to start and stay in the program.)

Check out CMU Tepper’s website for more information.

Columbia Business School

The deadline for August admission at CBS has been extended to June 1, 2020. The deadline for submitting test scores has been extended to July 1, 2020.

Check out Columbia Business School’s website for more information.

Cornell Johnson

Johnson is maintaining its application submission deadlines, but allowing applicants to submit test scores later.

• One Year MBA Applicants: Application deadline is April 15, 2020. Test scores must be submitted by April 30, 2020. If not, your application will be moved to the 2020-2021 application cycle.

• Two-Year MBA Applicants: The application deadline is April 8, 2020. You will have until June 1, 2020 to submit your test scores. If you are unable to do so, your application will be moved to the 2020-21 application cycle. 

Check out Cornell Johnson’s website for more information.

Dartmouth Tuck

Tuck is maintaining its Round 3 deadline and adding a Round 4 this year for applicants who need additional time. Round 4 will work on a rolling basis, and applicants can submit any time between April 1 – June 1, 2020.  The applications will be processed as they come in, and Tuck will provide decisions within “several weeks” from submission from May 11 – July 1, 2020.

Tuck’s criteria and required materials, including required test scores, are unchanged.

Check out Dartmouth Tuck’s admissions blog for more information.

Duke Fuqua

Duke Fuqua’s new Round 4 application deadline is May 19, 2020.

Duke has also postponed the orientation start-date for the Class of 2022 by approximately one month in response to the pandemic.

Check out Duke Fuqua’s website for more information.

Georgetown McDonough

Georgetown has relaxed its testing requirements and added a rolling admissions deadline of June 24 (following it’s Round 4 deadline of April 27th).

Check out Georgetown McDonough’s website for more information.

Harvard

The deadline for Harvard Business School’s 2 + 2 Round was postponed to June 1, 2020 in light of COVID.

Accepted Harvard Business School students have the option to request a deferral to start their full-time MBA studies later than this fall. Deferral requests must be made between May 15th and June 1st.

Check out Harvard Business School’s website for more information.

Indiana Kelley

Kelley will accept applications from domestic candidates on a rolling basis after its April 15th deadline.

Applicants who were unable to take the GMAT or GRE are welcome to submit their applications. Final admissions decisions will be made once test scores are received by the school.

Check out Indiana Kelley’s website for more information.

Kellogg

There are currently no delayed start dates for any of Kellogg’s programs. Decision release dates are similarly unchanged. Day at Kellogg for newly admitted students will take place virtually instead of in person.

While Kellogg’s Round 3 deadline of April 8, 2020 still stands, it will accept applications on a rolling basis through June 1st. (Applicants who submitted by the Round 3 deadline will receive admission and scholarship decisions on May 13th.)

Updated April 14: Kellogg is waiving the GMAT/GRE/TOEFL/IELTS requirement for those applying to Round 3.

Those who were either waitlisted or denied in Rounds 1 or 2 will be able to submit an appeal to have their application reconsidered.  Kellogg will provide instructions on how to file the appeal “in the coming days.”

Check out Kellogg’s website and admissions blog for more information.

Michigan Ross

Ross is extending its Round 3 deadline. Soojin Kwon wrote: 

“The priority deadline will remain March 30, but we will accept applications until May 29. Applications received after the priority deadline will be evaluated on a rolling basis. International applicants are highly encouraged to apply by the priority deadline.”

Applicants taking advantage of the extended deadline are reminded that scholarship funds are still available.

Ross is accepting applicants without test scores, though scores must be received by the program before a final admission decision can be made.

Check out Michigan Ross’s website for more information.

MIT Sloan

MIT Sloan has added an Extended Round 3 Deadline and will accept applications until June 15, 2020 on a rolling basis.

Check out MIT Sloan’s website for more information.

NYU Stern

The March 15 deadline has been pushed to May 1st, 2020. International applicants should strive to apply sooner to allow time for visa arrangements.

Check out NYU Stern’s website for more information.

SMU Cox

SMU Cox is waiving the GMAT/GRE requirement for all graduate programs beginning May 2020 and August 2020. It’s also extending its deadline to August 2, 2020 .

Check out SMU Cox’s admissions blog for more information.

UC Berkeley Haas

Haas is opening a new Extended Deadline of May 4, 2020. Applicants for this deadline will receive decisions on June 4. 

Haas has also announced the launch of The Cal Advantage Program, which will enable UC Berkeley seniors and alumni of all undergraduate and graduate programs to apply to Haas for fall 2020 entry. Cal Advantage applicants will enjoy a shortened application process, featuring one essay, one recommendation and optional test scores. Applicants to this program must apply in May or June of 2020 (click here for more info).

Check out UC Berkeley Haas’s admissions blog for more information.

UCLA Anderson

UCLA Anderson extended its application deadline to June 1, 2020.

Check out UCLA Anderson’s website for more information.

UNC Kenan-Flagler

UNC Kenan-Flagler will delay start of its full-time MBA program to August 31, 2020. It has also extended the Round 4 deadline through July 13th. Decision will be made on a rolling basis. 

Check out Kenan-Flagler’s website for more information.

UVA Darden

Darden is transitioning to rolling admissions for the 2019-20 application cycle with a final deadline of July 15, 2020. The sooner you apply, the sooner you will receive Darden’s decision.

UVA Darden already accepted any graduate admissions exam including the GMAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT. In light of COVID19 and closed testing centers, it will evaluate your application with an ACT or SAT or country-specific university entrance exam.

It encourages you to apply even if you are missing one or two elements in your application. Darden will begin the evaluation process, but hold your application until all elements are submitted. 

Check out UVA Darden’s admissions blog for more information.

Wharton

Wharton extended the Round 3 and Advance Access application deadlines to:

– Round 3: April 15, 2020

– Advance Access: May 27, 2020

Round 3 and Advance Access applicants can submit applications without having sat for a standardized test. However, if you do have scores to report, please do so.

Check out Wharton’s website for more information.

Yale SOM

Giving Round 3 applicants an extra ten days to submit their test scores. So if you submit your application by SOM’s Round 3 April 14 deadline, you will have an additional 10 days to submit your GMAT/GRE scores (until April 24). You will receive an answer by May 19.

In addition, Yale SOM is adding a Round 3 Extended deadline of May 27, 2020. You will receive an answer in the second half of June.

Check out Yale SOM’s admissions blog for more information.

We’re going to do our best to keep the changing deadline information current. However, please do not rely on this post; confirm the deadlines yourself because the situation is so fluid.

In addition, if you find out a school has changed their deadlines and is not on the list, please let us know by emailing blog@accepted.com.

The consultants at Accepted are here and ready to help guide you! All of our experts are available to work remotely and business is in full swing in spite of the current global circumstances. Check out our services and let us help you get accepted!

[xyz-ihs snippet=”MBA-WBR-COVID-19″]

With 30 years of career/admissions experience at four universities, including Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Business and College of Engineering, Dr. Karin Ash has met with thousands of recruiters seeking to hire the best students from leading schools. She has served as a member of the admissions committee, ensuring that the applicants who ultimately enroll are a good fit for the program and prime candidates for employers. Karin has been a Consultant with Accepted for 8 years and has facilitated students’ entry into top engineering, data science, MBA, and other STEM graduate MEng, MS, and PhD programs. Her clients have been accepted into MIT, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, UPenn, and USC. Want Karin to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• Get Your Game On: Prepping For Your Grad School ApplicationGet Your Game On: Prepping for Your Grad School Application, a free guide
• How to Write Your Master’s in Engineering Statement of Purpose
• How This Student Got Accepted to MIT’s Engineering Program and Landed a Job at Apple, podcast Episode 460

Related resources:

• School-Specific MBA Application Essay Tips
• How Will Coronavirus Impact Testing? [GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, ACT, SAT, TOEFL]
• 7 Steps to MBA Acceptance in 2021, free webinar

The post MBA Deadline Updates: How Will COVID-19 Affect the MBA Application Process? appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.