Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

The Tuck School of Business will discuss the hurdles that women in business face at their annual Women in Business Conference, taking place October 3 and 4 on campus in Hanover, New Hampshire. Organized by second-year Tuck students, the gathering will offer current students, alumni, and prospective students the chance to connect through both social activities and interactive educational panels. Prospective students can register here.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the financial services industry has already shed more than 200,000 jobs in the last year, ABC News reports. After Bear Stearns collapsed in the spring, business schools braced for potentially more layoffs and jobless alumni looking for help.

A joint Innovation Management Program from the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering and the Robert H. Smith School of Business has been created. Leading faculty from both schools will help entrepreneurs, small-business owners and executives in corporate venturing understand how to successfully manage the innovation their firm seeks to deliver.

Prospective students in the London area this weekend are invited to visit London Business School on Saturday, 27 September 2008, to find out more about their programs. There will be seminars on each of School’s degree programs: MBA, Masters in Finance, Executive MBA (including Dubai-London EMBA and EMBA-Global) and the Sloan Fellowship. Register to attend and receive more information.

The 2008 Babson Forum on Entrepreneurship & Innovation will be held at Babson on Thursday, October 2. Organized by Babson MBA students, the forum encourages innovation and entrepreneurship among students, alumni, budding entrepreneurs, and the greater Boston business community. The forum includes speakers, breakout panel sessions, the Babson Innovation Competition, and an Idea Expo and networking reception. Online registration is available.

Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, has announced that it will be offering its inaugural Cambridge Executive MBA commencing in September 2009, with online applications already being accepted. It is aimed at executives with significant years of professional experience who seek to improve their current managerial skills, and to develop new skills for even greater challenges in the dynamic global economy.

Given the current climate of uncertainty in the financial services community, Deidre Leopold, managing director of Harvard’s MBA admissions, offers short answers to new questions on the HBS Director’s Blog.

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Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

Inside Higher Ed reports that one of the chief criticisms of competition among business schools is the perception that colleges parrot each others’ programs just for the sake of saying they have them, too. However, with changes afoot at B-schools across the country, the one-upmanship seems to be dying down a bit.

BusinessWeek tested the virtual front doors of the Top 20 full-time MBA programs and found that some websites have lost sight of their essential purpose: educating students about the program in a simple, straightforward way.

Robert L. Joss announced that he will step down as dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business at the end of the current academic year after serving in this position for 10 years. During Joss’ tenure, the school has developed a new MBA curriculum and launched construction of a new business school campus aimed at supporting a program that will serve students for the 21st century.

The Wall Street fallout is hitting students in Prof. Richard M. Levich’s “Managing Investment Funds” course at NYU Stern, where they are charged with investing nearly $2 million of NYU’s $2.2 billion endowment over the course of the semester, injecting real-world experience — and consequences — into the classroom.

A team of students from the Ross School’s Tauber Institute for Global Operations created a green business model that could help United Parcel Service (UPS) save more than $7 million in less than six years by utilizing landfill gas as a sustainable energy source.

The USC Marshall School of Business announced the establishment of its Society and Business Lab (SBL), a ground-breaking program designed to encourage corporate engagement and social responsibility while educating students and preparing them for future leadership roles.

Students who sought jobs in the financial sector next year are looking for a Plan B, Financial Times reports. “Students recognize that the ground beneath them has shifted enormously,” says Carl Kester, deputy dean for academic affairs at Harvard Business School. “This is not just about Wall Street. There will be ripple effects in industries not related to financial services. Who knows where it will stop?”

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For a concise, thoughtful guide that will help you navigate the MBA admissions process with greater success, order our NEW book, The MBA Application Roadmap.

Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business is a welcoming environment with a diverse community of students.  Tepper admissions also demonstrates transparency in the process, and even provides a new tip each month for applicants.  The resources available though admissions are invaluable as you prepare your application strategy and approach for Tepper.

1. What are your short term and long term goals? How will a Tepper MBA help you achieve these goals? (Please include any information regarding what steps you have taken to learn more about Tepper.) (two-page limit)

Tepper allows plenty of space for you to answer this standard career goals essay.  As you would approach the same question for Wharton, Columbia or Kellogg, start by brainstorming your long-term goal, the short-term goal that will lead you there, and the MBA that will provide the bridge between your past experiences and your career vision.  You will want to demonstrate that you have thought about your goals and done any necessary research to understand the steps to accomplish them.

In addition, Tepper asks you to describe how you have learned about the Tepper MBA.  This section of the question clearly asks for your level of engagement and interest in the school, and it will be worth citing specific steps you have taken to learn about the program.  Personal interaction with members of the Tepper community will be especially impressive, though certainly demonstrating familiarity through research and understanding the program will be helpful as well.

2. Describe an instance in which you made an impact as part of a team or as an individual. How did this experience help shape you as a team member or leader and how will it enable you to contribute to the diverse Tepper community? (two-page limit)

This question seeks to understand your leadership style, and allows you two options to demonstrate your own personal leadership approach.  You may choose an example that is team focused, or focus on an individual accomplishment that demonstrates leadership. 

To be most effective in this essay, make sure you answer all three parts:  the situation, how the situation changed you, and how you will contribute to Tepper.  You will want to describe the situation succinctly and specifically.  Provide examples and demonstrate how you are a strong leader or team member.  Then you will discuss what you learned from the situation and how you have applied your learnings to subsequent experiences, therefore shaping your overall leadership style.  Finally, you will want to demonstrate how this experience will benefit Tepper.

3. Please answer two of the following three questions or statements: (two-page limit)

A. 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?

Overcoming obstacles successfully is a great way to demonstrate persistence, a positive attitude, and the ability to learn from challenging situations.  When discussing the situation, make sure you were able to learn from the situation and preferably turn it around to end up with an ultimately positive outcome.  If you could not turnaround the specific situation, how did you apply what you learned to new situations, to make them ultimately successful?  You will also need to address your development as a professional or student, and how this challenging situation taught you something about yourself or was an opportunity to mature as a person.

B. Describe a time in which your ethics were challenged. How did you deal with the situation and what did you learn from it?

Ethical dilemma situations are one way for the admissions committee to understand your unique moral filter and how you deal with challenging situations.  Choose your ethical dilemma carefully to make sure it is not a situation with a clear cut answer, leading to little ability to learn.  Ethical dilemma’s can be tricky for applicants, and are the sort of question you will want to seek several readers to comment upon, to ensure you appear to be honest and mature in the example.

C. One thing people would be surprised to know about me is…

This question is entirely open ended, providing an excellent opportunity for you to put in anything you have not been able to communicate to adcomm in the various other essays.  This type of question is perfectly suited for personal topics, and could be the perfect opportunity to reveal an interesting or diverse fact about yourself.  Be sure to explain the surprising attribute and comment upon why people would be surprised to know it about you.

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For a concise, thoughtful guide that will help you navigate the MBA admissions process with greater success, order our NEW book, The MBA Application Roadmap.

In a bid to stand out from its peers, George Washington University Business School plans to overhaul its graduate program this year with a major emphasis in ethical business practices and globalization. But will future MBAs value a new emphasis on ethics, or are they in it only for the money?

The trend toward incorporating ethical business practices and globalization into the curriculum is not necessarily new. However, rather than address the concept as an added course or workshop taught in the philosophy department, GW administrators say they are taking it further than any other school by infusing the entire curriculum with these principles. For example, when studying supply chain management, they will talk about what would happen if a supplier in China were using child labor.

“We really took a huge risk,” says Murat Tarimcilar, associate dean for graduate programs. “When we say we really would like people who are committed to be ethical leaders, we may be making the applicant pool very small. For many MBA students, the driving factor is the money. But we thought we had a responsibility, as a university, to really work on their character, as well.”

After a series of corporate scandals several years ago, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) concluded that a “crisis in business ethics” had occurred, and that schools should take a more active role in teaching students how to make decisions based on values and integrity, AACSB’s John Fernandes says.

“The market may not reward us for this,” says Tarimcilar, “but I hope it’s the right thing to do.”

Judging by many of the Washington Post’s reader comments, this shift in focus will be a hard sell. HjacobsESq., past president GWU B School Alumni Assn., says “A Business School should be to train young men and women to be good (read successful) business men/women. If there is the need to infuse this curriculum so thoroughly with the “touchy feely” ethical component, perhaps the school has been admitting the wrong type of student in the first place.”

LongTimeRez, meanwhile, thinks “You have to give GW credit. The school is so adept at Public Relations puffery that it has bought its own B.S. When your organization is built on the principles of ‘might makes right,’  ‘unfettered growth,’ and ‘manifest destiny,’ you have no ethics.”

What do you think? Should B-schools infuse their curriculums with an ethics component, or get back to teaching the basics of business skills and leave the ethics to the philosophy department?

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We are now on Facebook – please join the Stacy Blackman Consulting group, or become a friend of Stacy Blackman. I am posting news about MBA related events, job listings, and of course MBA news.

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For a concise, thoughtful guide that will help you navigate the MBA admissions process with greater success, order our NEW book, The MBA Application Roadmap.