Oxford Chancellor Rt Hon Lord Patten of Barnes chaired the event, entitled “China and the World of Finance – The Role of China in Global Financial Markets.” Speakers included noted political, business and academic figures from both the United Kingdom and China, among them Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China; Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Construction Bank; the Duke of York and the UK Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

“One of the purposes of the forum is to examine new approaches that are being taken to address financial market failures and the way in which they will influence policy recommendations going forward,” Saïd Dean Colin Mayer said. “These new ideas will have a critical influence on China’s role in the world’s financial system over the coming decades,” he added.

Oxford considers itself Europe’s leading center for the study of China and currently has more than 40 academics studying pre-modern, modern and contemporary China. Oxford launched its Oxford China Centre in May 2008. The center is designed to help connect academics working on China at Saïd and throughout the other departments across the university.

To learn more about the inaugural Oxford China Business Forum, click here.

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One more thing to note is that by asking applicants to detail the steps that they’ve taken to learn more about Tepper, the adcom is signaling the high importance of researching the program and understanding why it would be uniquely appropriate for you.  Discussing campus visits or exchanges with current students and alumni would be a great way to demonstrate your engagement with the community and emphasize that you are making an informed decision in applying.  To further your research we encourage you read the Clear Admit School Guide to Tepper, which contains a detailed and objective overview of the school’s academic and extracurricular offerings.

Essay B: The Tepper School’s culture relies on all members to be active contributors to our community. With your values, experiences, and interests, how will you make a unique contribution to the Tepper community? Your examples may include: classroom interaction, student activities, career development, community service, etc.
This is another classic second question in terms of MBA essays; after learning about what you feel Tepper can do for you, the adcom turns its focus to what you might bring to the CMU community.

The prompt is fairly broad and invites the applicant to imagine how his or her unique characteristics might translate into participation in the Tepper community. Remember that you want to stand out from the rest of the applicant pool, and this essay will allow you to introduce information to that purpose.

The essay question provides specific examples and guidelines as to how applicants can respond to this question.  Therefore in answering this prompt, it will be important for you to follow Tepper’s statement, specifically citing how your values, experiences, and interests will help you contribute to the Tepper community.  In order to provide a focused and effective answer to this question, applicants should use one or two anecdotes from their professional, academic, or extracurricular experiences to demonstrate how they would contribute to these three areas at Tepper.

Essay C: Please answer two of the following three questions or statements. Please clearly specify which questions you are answering. Your two answers should equal a total of two pages or less.
1. Describe an obstacle you have faced in your professional or academic life. How did you overcome this obstacle and how did it foster your development?
Whether the story is from your professional or academic life, the major themes of growth and learning remain the same. After describing the initial obstacle in detail, applicants should comment on both their thoughts and actions in response. It’s very important to present both one’s internal and external reactions in creating a full picture for the adcom.
This essay is a good place to highlight instances of resourcefulness and persistence, and provide a comprehensive picture of personal and professional development over the course of the narrative.  Applicants should keep in mind that the adcom will be using their account of their past thoughts and experiences as a barometer to measure their current attitudes and future approaches.

2. Describe a time in which your ethics were challenged. How did you deal with the situation and what did you learn from it?
Questions of this sort are designed to gauge an applicant’s ability to see two sides of a situation and appreciate the merits of both – and ultimately choose the best possible solution. The “challenged” detail in the question indicates that it’s not enough to simply discuss a situation where you chose to do the right thing; you need to be able to show that there was a compelling reason for you to have acted otherwise. The question lends itself to personal experiences as easily as professional ones, but it’s nice to give an example of how you view and handle ethical complexity in the workplace. For instance, there are often experiences of professional conflicts between people and profit that work well in this context.

After setting the scene in your essay, you should explore the dilemma in depth, analyzing each of your options and explaining the potential positive and negative consequences of each. Once you’ve acknowledged the difficulty of the situation, you should lead the reader through your decision-making process, explaining the reasons behind your ultimate decision. Ideally, your strong grasp of leadership and of problem-solving will be displayed by this analysis. Finally, you should present the results of your decision and the lessons you learned as a result.

3. One thing people would be surprised to know about me is…
This question provides candidates a chance to explore an important aspect of their candidacy not mentioned in their data forms, resume, or other responses. For applicants from oversubscribed groups in the applicant pool, this essay could offer a great opportunity to truly stand out from the crowd by sharing an interesting detail.

The element of “surprise” hints that the topic should not be one that the reader could readily discern from your essays, work history or major extracurricular involvements.  Perhaps you played the flute for 15 years, are an expert in bicycle repair or once visited ten countries in as many days.  Whatever topic you select, it would be ideal to link this surprise quality or fact to some element of your experience in the MBA program.

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TMZ has learned … Floyd Mayweather Jr . is a suspect in a battery domestic violence case. Multiple cop cars from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department showed up at Mayweather’s home early this morning.  We’re told cops received a call at 5:03 AM…

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The woman who claims Vince Neil roughed her up in a Las Vegas elevator is taking her battle public — releasing a video statement in which she says Neil threw her against a wall and bruised her arms. In the video, Jessica Radovicz — who recently filed a…

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The chart above shows monthly unemployment rates from: a) January 1931 to December 1940 (120 months) and b) January 2007 to August 2010.  We hear a lot of comparisons between the recent recession and the Great Depression, and the chart above shows that those comparisons are hugely exaggerated.  Consider the fact that there were 127 consecutive months of double-digit unemployment rates between November 1930 and May 1941, and 21 consecutive months with unemployment above 20% from April 1932 to December 1933, with a maximum of 25.6% in May of 1933.  Then compare that to the recent recession, where there were only three consecutive months of double-digit unemployment rates, with a maximum rate of 10.1% in October 2009.  

Bottom Line: As bad as the recent recession might have been, it was never anywhere close to the disastrous economic conditions of the 1930s.   

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And this is what gramophone and flexi disc collage loops sound like. And below is a blood transfusion for an onion, a documented connecting and street display. Extreme Zen?

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Name: Larry Seabrook (D)
District 12: Bronx
Reps: Co-op City, Baychester, Eastchester, Williamsbridge, Wakefield, Edenwald.
Member: since January 2002.

-Is a luxury bagel connoisseur.
-Is facing federal charges for money laundering, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and other stuff.
-Is a surreptitious divorcer.

(click image to enlarge)

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MONDAYv

The mother of a 17-year-old girl was concerned that her daughter was having sex..
Worried the girl might become pregnant and adversely impact the family’s status, she consulted the family doctor.
The doctor told her that teenagers today were very willful and any attempt to stop the girl would probably result in rebellion. He then told her to arrange for her daughter to be put on birth control and until then, talk to her and give her a box of condoms.
Later that evening, as her daughter was preparing for a date, the mother told her about the situation and handed her a box of condoms.

The girl burst out laughing and reached over to hug her mother, saying,
‘Oh Mom! You don’t have to worry about that! I’m dating Susan!’

TUESDAY

A man went to church one day and afterward he stopped to shake the preacher’s hand. He said, ‘Preacher, I’ll tell you, that was a damned fine sermon. Damned good!’
The preacher said, ‘Thank you sir, but I’d rather you didn’t use profanity.’
The man said, ‘I was so damned impressed with that sermon I put five thousand dollars in the offering plate!’

The preacher said, ‘No shit?’

WEDNESDAY

Brenda and Steve took their six-year-old son to the doctor.
With some hesitation, they explained that although their little angel appeared to be in good health, they were concerned about his rather small penis.
After examining the child, the doctor confidently declared, ‘Just feed him pancakes. That should solve the problem.’
The next morning when the boy arrived at breakfast, there was a large stack of warm pancakes in the middle of the table.
‘Gee, Mom,’ he exclaimed. ‘For me?’

‘Just take two,’ Brenda replied. ‘The rest are for your father.’

THURSDAY

One night, an 87-year-old woman came home from Bingo to find her 92-year-old husband in bed with another woman.. She became violent and ended up pushing him off the balcony of their 20th floor apartment, killing him instantly. Brought before the court, on the charge of murder, she was asked if she had anything to say in her own defense.

‘Your Honor,’ she began coolly, ‘I figured that at 92, if he could screw, he could fly.’

FRIDAY

A Doctor was addressing a large audience in Tampa . ‘The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago.. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long-term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. However, there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have eaten, or will eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?’

After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, ‘Wedding Cake.’

SATURDAY

Bob, a 70-year-old, extremely wealthy widower, shows up at the Country Club with a breathtakingly beautiful and very sexy 25-year-old tall, tan and terrific “hoochie-mamma” who knocks everyone’s socks off with her youthful sex appeal and charm and who hangs over Bob’s arm and listens intently to his every word. His buddies at the club are all aghast. At the very first chance, they corner him and ask, ‘Bob, how’d you get the trophy girlfriend?’ Bob replies, ‘Girlfriend? She’s my wife!’ They are knocked over, but continue to ask. ‘So, how’d you persuade her to marry you?’ ‘I lied about my age’, Bob replies. ‘What, did you tell her you were only 50?’

Bob smiles and says, ‘No, I told her I was 90.’

SUNDAY

Groups of Americans were traveling by tour bus through Holland .. As they stopped at a cheese farm, a young guide led them through the process of cheese making, explaining that goat’s milk was used. She showed the group a lovely hillside where many goats were grazing. ‘These’ she explained, ‘Are the older goats put out to pasture when they no longer produce.’ She then asked, ‘What do you do in America with your old goats?’

A spry old gentleman answered, ‘They send us on bus tours!

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Jonathan Bethune is a Content Developer at Knewton.

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Holmes

Someone walks in front of you with a piece of toilet paper attached to his shoe; your friend walks up to you and you notice a small bandage on his face, which smells of aftershave; a smiling woman playfully rubs her leg against her conversation partner’s under the table.

All of these situations lend themselves to inferences, because we can make an educated guess as to the causes and motivations behind each scenario. You’ll have to be an expert at making similar guesses on the GMAT. That’s why you can learn some lessons from the master of inferences, Sherlock Holmes:

Every day in our every interaction with others, we unconsciously make hundreds of inferences about all sorts of observations – the meaning of a friend’s brief text message, a coworker’s glance, a stain on a shirt, or a clicking sound under the front left wheel. (Turned out to be my brake pads.)

Note that an inference is the converse of an implication; the stimulus implies, the observer infers. The smell of chocolate chips implies the presence of fresh baked cookies in the kitchen. My assumption about their presence is an inference.

The GMAT too makes use of implication and inference in its Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections. Broadly speaking, there are two sorts of inference questions on the GMAT: global inference questions (which ask you think of a title or conclusion for a passage or argument, or to make a conjecture related to the text as a whole), and more targeted inference questions (related to passage claims, authors’ viewpoints, or tone). Inference questions aren’t hard to spot since they tend to use the words “imply” and “inference” in the stem.

Unlike assumption or strengthen/weaken questions, it is not always useful to come up with a possible answer for inference questions before looking at the actual answer choices. Since passage details often lend themselves to numerous possible inferences, we almost have no choice but to just go through each and every answer choice to find the best fit.

So what’s the most efficient way to handle these problems?  Your best bet is to take a page from the master of inferences himself, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

If you’ve read his stories then you know of his Jedi-like ability to know all about a person after a single casual glance. In the classic tale “The Red-Headed League,” for example, the good detective immediately deduces that Mr. Jabez Wilson is a former manual laborer who recently went to China simply by examining a few details about the man’s hands.

Holmes didn’t use any sort of secret technology or demonic powers; he just extrapolated from what was right in front of him. In the same way, GMAT questions don’t demand any sort of outside knowledge. Therefore, the first thing you should do for any question that starts, “We can infer from the above argument that…” is to eliminate any answer choices that reference topics outside of the argument’s scope.

Once you remove the irrelevant, try to rule out answer choices that are extreme, or try to substitute similar terms or confuse passage wording. These are harder to see, particularly for global inference questions. One shortcut method, if you’re stuck, is to look for synonyms for words in the answer choices in the text.

CR and RC inference questions invariably have at least a couple of answer choices that are either irrelevant, out of scope, extreme, or manipulative of passage wording. Other questions will try to hit you with answer choices that sound logical but aren’t actually implied by the text. Science topics, for example, may offer answer choices that accurately describe a phenomena but are still wrong since the passage does not say as much.

Eliminate two or three answer choices, and your odds will improve significantly for each question.  If two answers sound both sound totally right to you, re-read the relevant section of the text and go with your gut. After enough practice, hopefully your response to GMAT inference questions will be the same as Mr. Wilson’s after Sherlock Holmes explained how he deduced all of the details of Wilson’s background:

Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. “Well, I never!” said he. “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.”

For more information on Knewton, download Clear Admit’s independent guide to the leading test preparation companies here. This FREE guide includes coupons for discounts on test prep services at ten different firms!

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The QS World MBA Tour events provide MBA applicants with the opportunity to research business schools and learn more about the MBA admissions process. Each event features a pre-fair admissions panel, career panels with MBA recruiters and alumni, and a GMAT seminar with Kaplan. Additionally, tour attendees have the chance to participate in a sample MBA class, and receive information on MBA admissions and scholarships. Participating business schools include INSEAD, NYU Stern, Duke/Fuqua, Berkeley/Haas and more. Moreover, MBA applicants who attend one of the QS World MBA Tour events are eligible to apply for over $1.6 million in scholarships, to help finance their business school education.

Below is the schedule of QS World MBA Tour North American events for the Fall of 2010:

Los Angeles: September 11
San Francisco: September 12
Seattle: September 14
Vancouver: September 16
Toronto: September 19
Chicago: September 21
Boston: September 23
New York: September 25
Philadelphia: September 26
Washington, DC: September 28
Dallas: September 30
Houston: October 2
Atlanta: October 5
Miami: October 7

As a special offer, Clear Admit readers receive complimentary registration for these events. As these events are fast approaching, register now to secure your free registration at one of the QS World MBA Tour events!

To learn more about the QS World MBA Tour events, click here.

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TMZ has learned Kristin Cavallari ’s mother was arrested for an alleged DUI near Chicago, and Kristin was right there in the front seat during the bust, with one thing on her mind … fast food. Police in Barrington, Illinois confirm Kristin’s mom –…

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TMZ has learned Susan Boyle has left Los Angeles in tears after being snubbed by a songwriter who refused to let her sing one of his hits on ” America’s Got Talent .” Susan arrived to L.A. earlier today to perform the song ” Perfect Day ” on the show.…

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NJ.com posted video of Jacobs refusing to answer questions at practice, and the former fourth round draft pick finally broke his silence by asking a reporter, “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Jacobs then walked past the reporters, abruptly ending the interview.

The Giants begin their season on Sunday when they host the Carolina Panthers. Scroll down for video of the incident.

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