Read on for real stories from MBA applicants and students…

Starwalker struggled with Ross’s essay questions this week, but found inspiration alongside Darden student and fellow blogger Mandy Lozano. Both link to a video of professor Randy Pausch, famed for his Last Lecture about celebrating life, who died Friday, July 25.

Welcome to new blogger the BS Applicant, who muses over being an introvert manager after taking a Myers-Briggs test that labeled him a “moderately expressed introvert.”

MBA Veggie, Happy Bunny and Soni are giddy with joy, now that Columbia has released the Fall 2009 application online.

Greek Entrepreneur offers four reasons why you should apply at Round One; he’s convinced that irrespective of what the b-schools are saying, the majority of the admissions come from R1 and R2 application pools.

During his internship in Chile, Iday reveals the culinary aspects of his truly global MBA.

The first years have landed at Tulane, with a bevy of international MBAs ready to embark on a compulsory one-month management communication course.

RVD at Wharton West provides a recap of and response to the Scoretop scandal, adding that one of his readings last semester in MGMT 621,“The Rationalizing Animal,” was all about the psychology behind exactly this type of situation.

Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

The Financial Times has created a new website called MBA Gym, which provides free, interactive online training sessions on key concepts, such as Strategy or Finance, taught in MBA programs. The site offers a series of workouts, each lasting for approximately 15 minutes, which aims to give a brief and engaging introduction to the subject.

Starting in Fall 2008, NYU Stern MBA students can enhance their understanding of the nonprofit sector in a new course, “Examining the Nonprofit Capital Market: The Integrated Challenges of Performance Measurement, Scale and Sustainability.” Through course work and guest lectures, students will confront these challenges and address methods for increasing efficiencies through business practice.

The Ross School Office of Admissions has moved the deadline for Round One applications to the full-time MBA Program from Nov. 1, 2008, to Oct. 10, 2008.  Under the new timeline, Round One applicants who are selected for an interview may be invited to do so as early as mid-October. The new deadline also means that all invitations to interview will be sent by Dec. 1, 2008, which enables applicants to complete them before the holidays.

Richard K. Lyons, the chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs, New York, was named the 14th dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business this week. In other news, the school is creating a center focused on developing new management strategies and technologies to promote innovation in American companies and help firms maintain a competitive edge in the global marketplace. The Garwood Center for the Management of Technology and Innovation is being created with a $4.5 million endowment from Haas School alumnus Ed Garwood, BS 31, and his wife, Elsie.

The Financial Times reports that HEC Paris will open the third iteration of its executive MBA program in Beijing in October, targeted towards managers working for Chinese state-owned enterprises. The announcement follows moves by other Western business schools, notably London’s Cass school of business at City University, to freeze programmes in China.

This week’s GMAT challenge from PrepForTests.com is a problem solving question.

Have a go at answering this and then review your answer.

With incidents of cheating on the rise and the Scoretop.com scandal still on everyone’s minds, top business schools around the country will soon require a high-tech identity check for standardized admissions tests. The Wall Street Journal has reported that by May 2009, all B-school applicants taking the GMAT will have to undergo a “palm vein” scan, which takes an infrared picture of the blood coursing through their hands and is unique to every individual.

The GMAT will become the first global standardized exam to use palm vein recognition to provide positive identification for each test taker. The scans are used widely in Japan among users of automated teller machines but only recently have appeared in the United States. Palm-vein scanning on GMAT test takers will begin next month in Korea and India, with U.S. centers starting as early as this fall.

More effective than traditional finger-printing security measures, palm vein scanning will nip “proxy” test takers in the bud. The Wall Street Journal reports that five years ago, federal authorities broke up a ring of six fraudsters who took more than 590 exams, including GMATs, for customers who paid at least $3,000.

Donald L. McCabe, a Rutgers University professor of management, tells the Journal that it’s understandable that business schools are now “protecting the integrity of their test, whatever it takes.” Having polled more than 200,000 students over the past two decades, McCabe concludes that those in business school cheat more than their peers in other disciplines. He says business-school students often cite instances of corporations’ “bottom-line mentality” and ethical lapses to justify their own dishonesty.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, GMAC