Volunteering isn’t just a great activity to engage in around the holiday season, it’s an important aspect of your MBA application profile.  If you are planning to apply during the upcoming application seasons in the spring or fall and do not have any meaningful and long-term extracurricular (outside of work) activities, now is the time to start becoming involved.   MBA programs in general seek candidates who are involved with their community, and who naturally take leadership positions. 

There is more to getting involved in your community than adding a line to your resume.  Meaningful involvement in a voluntary activity can give you the opportunity to exercise your leadership and management skills in a low-risk and high-responsibility situation.

Finding an activity:

• Go online and look for community service groups in your community.  Brainstorm things that you enjoy doing in your personal life and seek out related organizations.  Your extracurricular activities should be activities you are passionate about, and do not have to save the whole world.  Impacting your alumni organization in a positive way will be just as impressive as engaging in charity work.
• Think about activities that you participated in as an undergrad and become re-engaged. It’s great to be able to show continuity in your interests and goals.  Do you have any life long hobbies or interests that you can expand upon in a group setting?

Having an Impact:

• If you are already involved in a volunteer activity, the quality of your contributions is most important.  Seek out leadership opportunities in your existing activities, or find an organization that can benefit from your leadership and management skills.
• While volunteering at a soup kitchen once a week is great, is there an opportunity to expand the group’s impact or management?  Think about how you can leverage your energy and skills to improve any organization you are part of.

Extracurriculars as part of your application strategy:

• Taking charge in your extracurricular activities is great material for any leadership, management or teamwork themed essay.  If you are able to coordinate a group of volunteers to make an impact, you can certainly bring positive benefits to the workplace.
• Are you a career changer?  Your extracurricular activities may be a great introduction to your target industry or function.  Think about how you can demonstrate your knowledge of your chosen career through volunteer and community activities.

Additional Resources:

Some links that will help you get started, from mentoring children with Big Brothers, Big Sisters, to finding individual activities in New York City:

Big Brothers Big Sisters

http://www.bbbs.org

Taproot Foundation

http://www.taprootfoundation.org/


Volunteer Match

http://www.volunteermatch.org


 New York Cares

http://www.nycares.org/

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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.

If you’ve got some down time this holiday season and want to brush up on the latest research and materials from a top MBA program, browse the Sloan School of Management offerings via MIT OpenCourseWare(OCW). This web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content allows anyone with an Internet connection to empower their minds with free lecture notes, exams and videos.

Earlier this month, the university announced that, through OCW, more than 50 million visitors worldwide have accessed MIT course materials. What began as a bold idea in 2002 has become a global movement that is reshaping the role of the university in the digital age. Some of the latest OCW courses added by Sloan–which features more than 100–include Global Strategy and Organization, Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Generating Business Value from Information Technology.

Visitors use the site in a wide variety of ways to support formal and informal learning. For some, OCW is a tool to motivate students and gives them access to a wider knowledge base and deeper understanding of the subject. Others laud the way OCW helps self-learners explore new subjects and understand them in an organized way.

“To most people outside, MIT was like the forbidden city. They had no idea what happened inside,” says MIT professor Walter Lewin. “And with OCW, the bridge was lowered. They now see MIT in a completely different way.”

The Sustainable MBA Fund, a nonprofit organization, is offering financial assistance to students pursuing an MBA degree in the area of sustainable development. According to its website, the fund is “designed to benefit individual students who are positioned to have a considerable positive impact on the further integration of socially responsible business practices,” particularly in dealing with people and the environment. Students can receive up to $100,000 in aid, depending on need and the actual availability of funding.

Demand is widely expected to skyrocket across many different fields for professionals who are trained in environmentally-friendly and sustainable subject areas. Earlier this month, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and School of Arts and Sciences launched a new program to enable participants to earn a dual master of business administration/master of environmental studies degree in three years or less. This course of study will groom environmental-issues students for global leadership roles in environmental management, finance and other business specialties.

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education recently noted that there are now 13 MBA programs in the United States on sustainable enterprise, with another 16 universities in the U.S. and Canada with programs that feature environmentally and socially responsible business methods.

But, is everybody going green? Here’s a video that shows just how important expressions of “green” are to the Average Joe. “Does Green?”, developed from initial fieldwork done by Georgetown MBAs who are taking a consumer behavior class of Gary Bamossy, professor of marketing at the McDonough School of Business, reveals a bit of a gap between green attitudes and behaviors among consumers today.

So you’ve decided you want an MBA.  You’ve taken the GMAT, ordered transcripts and thought about career goals.  Now it’s time to start your school selection and research.

Criteria: Before you start researching programs, it will be helpful to understand your own criteria and preferences to take your school selection past the level of rankings.  Do you want to be in the city or in a rural setting?  What type of coursework are you most interested in?  Do you prefer a close-knit class or a large network?  Do you need to be near a particular location for personal or professional reasons?

The Internet:  One of the best preliminary resources you have at your disposal is a web search and blog perusal.  To start, you may want to visit Businessweek.com’s MBA rankings and profiles.  Another great resource for rankings and data is the Financial Times.   Rankings are a good way to understand the reputation of a program, but you should treat them as a starting point only. 

While you are visiting Businessweek you may want to investigate the forums, where applicants, experts and admissions directors chat about applications, tips, strategy and profiles.   While there is much rumor and speculation on these chat boards, there are also gems of relevant information.  Stacy Blackman Consulting also participates in Beat the GMAT’s forums, which are another source of MBA information and comraderie.

These days most MBA program websites are comprehensive sources of in depth information.  Once you have a program hit list, you can visit the schools’ official websites for in depth information on classes, faculty, student clubs and special programs.

In Person:  When you have a target list of schools you are serious about, it’s time to do the more qualitative research that will help you understand your fit with the program and community, and your interest in attending the school for two years of your life.

• School Visits:  Time and schedule permitting, a school visit is a great way to see classes for yourself, meet current students and get a sense of the campus and city.  If you plan ahead through the admissions office you can set up a class visit, perhaps lunch with students, and an admissions information session.  Allow enough time to walk around campus and explore between formal activities.
• Admissions Events:  If you are far away or short on time, admissions events are another way to have an in person touch point with your chosen schools.   Admissions officers travel all over the world to conduct information sessions with prospective students, often including alumni who can answer your questions about culture and career options.
• Your Network:  In addition to the formal admissions sponsored methods, utilizing your own network of MBA alumni is a great way to learn more about your schools.  If you aren’t part of a typical MBA profession you can ask around at work and among your family and friends to see if anyone knows an alum of your target programs.  Once you have some contact names, reach out to see if you can ask a few questions.  Following networking best practices like asking for additional contacts and sending thank you notes after every meeting is a great way to expand your learning and establish a network of support for your process.

Once you have researched all of your target programs, you will have a solid list of potential schools that you are excited about.  Make sure you take notes to cite in your essays, and keep in touch with all of your new contacts through the application process!

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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.

I am on Twitter too…click to follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/stacyblackman

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.

The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV), born at Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management in 2007, has added a fifth partner to its national consortium. The Krannert School of Management at Purdue University officially joins Whitman, UCLA Anderson School of Management, Mays Business School at Texas A&M and Florida State University’s College of Business as part of a groundbreaking free program designed to assist veterans with disabilities and offer training in small business start-up and management to servicemen and women injured in the line of duty since 2001.

“By offering veterans with disabilities the tools to create and grow their own businesses, we are helping them fight yet another battle – the battle for their own economic freedom,” says Mike Haynie, assistant professor of entrepreneurship at the Whitman School, creator of the EBV, and a former U.S. Air Force major. “There is, perhaps, no better way to thank them for their extraordinary service than to demonstrate our confidence in their bright futures.”

The EBV integrates world-class faculty, entrepreneurs, disability experts and business professionals in an educational program focused on training veterans in the competencies associated with small business ownership. Entrepreneurship is a way for veterans to make a way for themselves and their families, and to re-engage the economic engine of their communities and ultimately the nation.

The Whitman School of Management says business ownership offers veterans the opportunity to “own their futures” while also offering the flexibility to accommodate the unique challenges associated with a service-connected disability. Participating schools say this consortium represents one of the first, significant partnerships of its type since World War II.

Applications for the EBV are accepted on a rolling admissions basis and are on a first-come, first-served basis.”The Krannert School is honored to be part of the EBV consortium,” says Rick Cosier, Krannert School dean and Leeds professor of management. “Helping the veterans with disabilities of this millennium understand how to start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs is a noble calling for any business school. The faculty and staff at the Krannert School eagerly look forward to our first EBV class.”

With today’s shifting economic landscape, rabbis across the country have come under increasing pressure to raise funds to keep their synagogues healthy and oversee budgets that are being squeezed as members lose their jobs, the Jewish Daily Forward reports. Trouble is, many rabbis lack crucial business skills to run their synagogues successfully.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management offers the first ongoing, rigorous executive education program geared toward both rabbis and their executive directors.  During the first week of December, 55 rabbis and executive directors from leading Reform, Conservative and Orthodox synagogues attended the inaugural five-day Kellogg Rabbinic Management Program to learn how to better manage a staff, resolve conflict, raise funds and polish their leadership skills.

The program is the brainchild of Efrem Goldberg, senior rabbi at the Orthodox Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida. “We have such rich rabbinic training with so little management training, despite the fact that so much of what we do now involves fundraising, conflict resolution, crisis management, governance, managing people,” he says.

Fellow Boca Raton Synagogue member Dinah Jacobs, whose husband Donald Jacobs is dean emeritus of the Kellogg School, urged Goldberg to attend one of Kellogg’s advanced executive programs. Goldberg describes the experience as transformative, and thought it seemed well-suited for rabbis, who could gain valuable management skills.

Of all the courses offered at the Kellogg program, professor Liz Livingston Howard’s fund-raising class garnered top marks, the Jewish Daily Forward reports. In evaluations, many participants praised the course’s practical nature, saying it was enormously valuable for synagogue life. Given the current financial environment, participants spoke frankly about bolstering the skills needed to relate to their lay leadership, who may be experiencing hard times.

“In a climate that is very nice and rosy, you can get away with not the best or optimal management technology or thinking,” says Jacobs, the dean emeritus, who taught a class on synagogue governance. “In an environment that’s very fraught with danger, with the economy turning down, not up, it’s more important that you have an optimum methodology to operate with, because frankly, you don’t have the space to make mistakes.”