The rise of the European MBA and more creative professions for MBAs were two hot topics covered yesterday in BusinessWeek.

Mark Scott’s analysis of growing number of foreign students flocking to the continent’s top MBA programs–London Business School, France’s Insead and HEC, Switzerland’s IMD, and Spain’s IE, IESE, and Esade—reveals that the global perspectives offered by these programs, along with their strong links to multinational employers, are helping graduates land jobs despite the dour economy.

Meanwhile, with jobs in finance and consulting still a bit shaky, Matt Symonds says B-school students are turning a fresh eye to new, more creative fields, such as luxury goods and the arts.

Valerie Gauthier, associate dean at HEC Paris, tells Symonds that MBA classes need more entrants from politics, history, philosophy, and the arts, so that students from less-conventional backgrounds would learn the realities of life on the front line of business, while their peers would gain a wider view beyond the balance sheet and the board room.

Both of these stories point to an unexpected and intriguing directional shift for MBA programs. For more information, read the original articles here and here.

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The Stanford MBA Admission Blog posted an entry yesterday about two upcoming conferences that prospective students may want to check out.

Many Voices: Perspectives on Diversity, Saturday May 15, 2010. Many Voices is an opportunity for prospective applicants who bring diversity to the Stanford GSB community to learn more about our program.

XX Factor: Women Changing the World, Sunday May 16, 2010. XX Factor is geared toward women who are considering applying to business school.

Both events provide an overview of the MBA program, a class immersion experience, and opportunities to hear from students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Due to limited space, anyone interested in attending these conferences must complete a brief application.

Many Voices Application
XX Factor Application

Applications are due on Friday, April 9, 2010, by 5 p.m. PST. Notifications will be emailed by Friday, April 16, 2010.

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If you are feeling stumped by your application essays and need some additional guidance, check out our NEW series of essay guides for MBA applications. Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Stanford and Wharton available now. They are seriously terrific and we are proud to say that almost every person who has ordered one has come back for more!

We are on Facebook – join the Stacy Blackman Consulting group, or become a friend of Stacy Blackman.

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

This Friday, the Darden School of Business and the Batten Institute will unveil the new innovation laboratory, or i.Lab, which the school calls a state-of-the-art learning environment meant to inspire a new approach to teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

New York Times bestselling-author Daniel Pink, who has written extensively about the rise of right-brain thinkers, will speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The event takes place from 1-3 p.m. EST and will be video streamed live at www.darden.virginia.edu/iLab and available online 60-days after the event.

Elizabeth O’Halloran, managing director of the Batten Institute, says that “In these challenging economic times, the i.Lab makes possible an effectual, multi-disciplinary approach to entrepreneurship and innovation, providing students a powerful and relevant skill set to succeed and excel in today’s global marketplace.”

Darden also recently announced the launch of new Global Business Experiences–one-to-two week courses that take place in countries around the world each spring. The programs highlight how to do business in each country and introduce students to both cultural and business protocol through classes at partner schools, company visits and meetings with prominent political and business leaders.

This year, first and second-year Darden students will travel at mid-term break to Argentina, Bahrain, Brazil, India, Mexico, Spain and Sweden, and – for the first time – to Egypt and then to Israel in May.

Professor Gal Raz, who teaches operations and supply chain management at Darden, says this GBE is unique in its focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in Israel; students will  work on an actual project to develop a business plan to bring a product to the U.S. market.

For more on the GBE program, the video below shows interviews with three participants from the MBA class of 2009 explaining why they took advantage of this internationally focused program at Darden.

More women than ever are considering pursuing an MBA, which has led to some unexpected pipeline trends revealed by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) in this month’s Graduate Management News.

GMAC has reported that the number of GMAT tests taken by women surpassed 100,000 for the first time ever last year. Exams taken by women in the testing year ending June 30, 2009 represented 39.5% of all exams taken, a figure that has changed only one percentage point in 10 years.

However, Lamia Walker, GMAC regional director for Europe, Middle East and Asia,  points out some major shifts by region, age, and career intent. “When we break down gender distribution by regional citizenship, we find a wide range – from 56.1 percent of exams in Eastern Europe to just 24.6 percent in Central Asia,” she says.

(source: Graduate Management Admission Council)

Key findings from the 2010 mba.com Registrants Survey Report indicate that:

Schools need to recruit women sooner. The average woman first considers business school less than two years after finishing her undergraduate degree, almost nine months earlier than the average man. Women also sit for the GMAT exam sooner than men and submit their first business school application more rapidly than male counterparts.

Women typically submit fewer applications. Female applicants considering full-time MBA programs submitted an average of 2.4 applications, compared with 3.0 for men. Women in Central Asia and in Asia Pacific submitted the greatest number of applications on average, 3.7 and 3.3 respectively.

Don’t write off the female quants. Female prospective students are more likely than men to consider MA/MS in Accounting programs, and the average number of submitted applications reported by women to any graduate management education program type is highest among those applying to MA/MS Finance programs (3.2 applications on average in 2009).

The survey report found numerous differences between men and women when it comes to preferred study location, financing plans, information sources, business school preferences and employment outcome, as well as significant differences by gender in the skills that prospective students hope to improve in business school.

Armed with this information, MBA programs should be able to more effectively outreach to talented female applicants.