Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

Economy dashes b-school dreams — International students hoping to finance their MBAs at top schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Ross and Cornell through the now-defunct CitiAssist or Sallie Mae financial aid programs face mounting anxieties as no loan program has stepped forward to take their place. (BusinessWeek)

Connecting with customers is key to survival — Last week’s Kellogg Marketing Conference hit home the hard fact that firms need to not just listen to their consumers, but to engage and connect with them on a deeper, more meaningful level if they hope to survive the economic downturn. Getting too cozy with consumers can have its down side, though. Case in point: when green-minded members of the public seeded Chevy’s video website with anti-truck videos, causing some serious damage to Chevy’s image.

Slew of profs go to Washington — The Harvard Crimson is reporting on the departure of two more faculty members set to vacate their posts at Harvard to join the Obama administration. Economics professor Jeremy C. Stein and Kennedy School professor Jeffrey B. Liebman will join a growing list of Harvard intellectuals headed for the nation’s capital.

“Glass ceiling and sticky floor remain in place,” says Cherie Blair –  The civil rights lawyer and wife of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke Monday night at the annual Weatherspoon Lecture at Kenan-Flagler Business School on the state of working women today. When it comes to the driving force in economic history, it’s not China, Brazil or India, Blair said, using the term “womanomics” to describe women’s relationship to the economy.

Georgetown panel offers solutions to crisis — The Financial Times and the McDonough School of Business co-sponsored “A Panel Discussion on the Economic Crisis and Global Challenges” for Georgetown students earlier in the week. Overall, the panelists expressed optimism about getting out of the current recession–not depression. “As soon as we recover, we need to tell people to stop spending like mad and start saving like mad,”  said William Gale, director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.

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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.

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

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

While half of America tunes in to see whether the Steelers or the Cardinals brings home the trophy this coming Sunday, MBA students and faculty at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management will be scrutinizing Super Bowl XLIII for another reason: For the fifth consecutive year, marketing students will watch, analyze and grade each advertisement during the game for Kellogg’s Super Bowl Advertising Review.

The tanking economy should make the job especially interesting, as advertisers scramble to create enough buzz to favorably impact their companies’ bottom lines. During the Review, marketing faculty and students from the Kellogg Marketing Club rate the advertisements on a series of academic criteria and develop a final ranking of the most – and least – successful advertisers.

Using Kellogg-developed criteria known as ADPLAN, the students will attempt to quantify each spot’s Attention, Distinction, Positioning, Linkage, Amplification and Net equity. How will advertisers perform during this era of economic hardship? Will consumer uncertainty force advertisers to alter their game a bit? What makes a strong Super Bowl ad during a recession?

Professors Tim Calkins and Derek Rucker will lead the Review and have been blogging about Super Bowl advertising in the lead up to the main event. Check out Calkins’ posts on the pressures facing Super Bowl ad superstar Anheuser-Busch, and on Hyundai’s chances of swaying luxury car buyers to their new Genesis model.

Some food for thought to accompany the beer and nachos on game day.

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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.

Every Wednesday, Jeremy Dann contributes to our BNET B-School blog, usually interviewing very interesting professors and reporting on cutting edge theories, research and programs.   This week it was Chris Erickson, the faculty director of a new glogal program at UCLA.  If you are interested in learning more about what is really happening inside top MBA programs, this is a great weekly post to watch out for.  It’s useful to prospective MBAs trying to understand what various programs can offer, and to anyone in business who is interested in learning more…that should be most of us, right?

Check out this week’s interview with Chris Erickson, and last week’s with Paul Marshall of Harvard.