London Business School has partnered with Goldman Sachs to establish a new scholarship for full-time MBA students. Created to highlight the company’s commitment to diversity, the Goldman Sachs International Scholarship will award the first £20,000 scholarship to a deserving MBA candidate starting the program in Autumn 2008. The scholarship selection process will take into consideration financial need along with academic merit.

A statement issued by LBS last week says “Goldman Sachs is delighted to be working with London Business School to launch a new scholarship award. This scholarship will be directed at international students who are considering studying for the MBA. We hope the Goldman Sachs Scholarship will strengthen our global reach and continue to demonstrate our commitment to diversity.”

More information about the Goldman Sachs International Scholarship can be found on the MBA scholarships pages of the London Business School website.

The QS World MBA Tour offered a chat recently on navigating the MBA admissions process. Here are some of the highlights of that session, led by Zoya Zaitseva, manager of the European leg of the world’s biggest international MBA fair.

What is a real difference between European and US MBAs? What are the reasons to choose each of them?

We all have different reasons for choosing the schools. Somebody doesn’t want to travel too far and prefers to study in Europe; others need guaranteed loans and apply to top American schools only. I would put it this way: if you want to be able to work in the US, Europe or any other part of the world, American schools would be your choice. It is much more challenging to find a good job in States after a European or Asian business schools (but I am not saying it is impossible). Most of the American schools offer two-year programs; students are a bit younger than in Europe. At the same time, there are two-year program in Europe and one year programs in States.

Do the top schools have seats for applicants from different counties? If I’m a Filipino and 25 years old, is that diverse enough for the admissions committee from the top 10 schools?

Being just “a Filipino and 25 years old” might not be good enough. Think of yourself as of the candidate who needs to get in, but stand out. You will be competing with hundreds of international candidates from around the world, so your age and nationality is not what you sell. Before you start working on your application package, write down five-six selling points that make you different from other candidates. While working on your essays or getting ready for the interview always remember these points and prove your uniqueness in all possible ways, not just by the ethnic background.

I face some financial difficulties. What are my chances for them to offer me a considerable scholarship that could cover at least 3/4 of my tuition fees?

Scholarships are rather limited in the MBA world, but at the same time there are millions of dollars of unclaimed scholarships so please do your homework and study the web for the opportunities. QS World MBA Tour offers over $1M in scholarships, schools do it every year on need-based or merit-based grounds; independent providers are there for you: www.myrichuncle.com, www.fastweb.com, etc. In the US most of the top business schools will be also able to provide you with the loan, which is also a great option for an MBA candidate.

If I want to stop being an employee and start my own business, which Executive MBA is the best choice for me?

Executive MBA programs are actually not that great for career switchers. Why not do an Executive MBA while you are still working and then set up your own business? The school will give you not just knowledge and tools, but also a fantastic network that might generate new ideas for your career future.

If you plan to combine work and study, check out modular MBA programs. For the candidates located in Central Europe or ex-USSR countries something like one week every two months works better than every second weekend in London. Chicago GSB in London, INSEAD in Paris, IMD in Lausanne, Duke-Goethe in Frankfurt, IESE in Barcelona - this is not the full list of the modular MBA programs that you may consider. IE Business School in Spain and Ashridge in the UK are good in entrepreneurship, check them out, too.

I have good school and college background and can get LoRs (letters of recommendation) from both my deans. However, when it comes to an LoR from my workplace, my client, who is a senior project manager, is one difficult fellow who might give me just a “Good” LoR, while my direct manager would give me a “Great!” LoR but is just a team lead and not a very high ranked person in the organization. Whom should I take an LoR from?

Which one of your prospective recommenders has wider experience with you and had a chance to observe you in a team environment or stressful situations when you had to demonstrate your leaderships skills, creativity, problem solving talents, etc? I mean, the recommendation is not about the title, but about how well the recommender actually knows you. A good LoR from a client with whom you’ve been working for over a year will be better than a great LoR from a team lead who has known you for just a couple of months. Besides, you can always balance good recommendation with great essays - just tell about what you think would be missing in the recommendation there.

What would be your personal advice about the best European/UK EMBA program?

Depends upon where are you based, how flexible you are in terms of the traveling, your background and career goals. There are a lot of strong Executive MBA programs in Europe - European, joint international, American, so it is up to you which one you pick up.

From my previous experience I can say that the candidates from Russia and Ukraine usually prefer modular programs that allow them to travel for not more than six weeks a year or so (except for IMD). Here are some of the Executive MBA programs that you may consider: Chicago GSB - London, IESE, INSEAD, IMD, TRIUM, One MBA, LBS/Columbia and LBS Executive MBA, Duke Fuqua, IE Business School.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business claimed the top spot for a fourth year in the Financial Times 2008 Global MBA rankings, released earlier this week. Rounding out the upper echelon we have the usual suspects: Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and the London Business School, which jumped from fifth to second place this year—the highest position ever for a European business school.

See the complete list of Financial Times rankings here.

British business schools have surged in popularity, the FT reports, as London has grown as a world financial center. At London Business School, for example, 69% of graduating students last year took their first permanent job in the UK, even though only 9% of the students were British. The strong pound has also made UK job offers financially competitive for overseas students, the paper reports. Not so for the flip side, though. The anemic dollar translates into less-than-stellar salaries by comparison. Cheaper tuition may make that more bearable for many foreign students.

This year’s rankings include a growing number of world-class business schools in Asia, particularly in China. “The rise in volume and quality of Asian business schools is also economically linked,” points out Arnoud De Meyer, director of the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. “This is for a very simple reason: the demand for business schools is correlated with [the size of] GDP.” De Meyer believes the increase in the number of Asian business schools will result in a wave of innovation, just as the rise of the European business school saw innovations such as the development of the one-year MBA program and the creation of culturally diverse student bodies. “How do you manage in fast-moving economies with limited infrastructure?” asks De Meyer. “People have to be extremely creative in managing when infrastructure is under-developed.”

American business schools continue to outpace their European counterparts where funding is concerned, the FT reports. Healthy endowments at U.S. schools help attract both faculty and students. Lisa Giannangeli, director of marketing for MBA admissions at Stanford, told the FT that 72% of students in this year’s class received some form of financial aid. “We paid over $7 million in grants and research assistantships,” she said.

And while European schools are stepping up their academic research output, American schools are moving more towards their European counterparts in teaching methods, including more teamwork and overseas projects, the FT revealed. Big name schools such as Stanford, Columbia and Yale have all recently redrawn their curriculum to incorporate these pro-active elements.

In a shift from previous years, the FT analysis points to U.S. schools’ accepting greater numbers of recent undergraduates into MBA programs as another major point differentiating them from their European counterparts. According to the FT, the ability to enter an MBA program in the United States without prior related work experience could prove particularly attractive in the future to European career changers.

How are prospective MBAs reacting to the rankings? Oops, I Plan to Do it Again gripes that Wall Street Journal and FT rankings are based on bizarre, single-factor criteria, preferring to stick with the more reasonable Business Week and US News rankings. And some posters on the Business Week forum feel an anti-U.S. sentiment exists in the FT rankings. Is this a European invasion or do they have an unfair home advantage (FT is a European Business Daily), wonders Stuart Little gets an MBA at St. Gallen. The blogger goes on to ask whether American B-schools are getting complacent, since though the United States is still clearly the favorite destination to pursue a business education, the current lack of H1 B visas is denting the popularity of American business education.

As we’ve mentioned in our essay tips, you need to do your homework on schools and express in your essays how you will contribute to each school’s community. A great resource around this is the Businessweek.com Admissions Chats with admissions representatives from top schools. These are online Q&A’s the Businessweek.com posts regularly.

Topics covered with the Yale representatives include:
*Study abroad and international trips
*Health care sector coverage
*Consulting careers post-Yale
*Dual degrees
*New curriculum
*Yale culture
*New Haven
*What the admissions committee is looking for and trends in admissions
*Nuts and bolts of interviews, timelines, extra recommendations, scholarships

They also have admissions chats with Haas, HBS, Columbia, LBS. Here’s the link to all of them.