For most b-school applicants, the high cost of an top-tier MBA program is an important consideration in the decision-making process. If that sounds like you, check out the latest ranking released by Bloomberg Businessweek of the highest debt burdens facing MBA graduates, where the questionable first-place honor goes to….Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business with an average debt burden of $87,398.

Here’s the bird’s-eye view of the dubious Top Ten:

1. Duke Fuqua

Program Cost: $109,844
Average Starting Salary: $111,812
Average Debt Burden: $87,398

2. University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School

Program Cost: $121,610
Average Starting Salary: $120,702
Average Debt Burden: $83,226

3. Yale School of Management

Program Cost: $115,321
Average Starting Salary: $104,147
Average Debt Burden: $82,293

4. Chicago Booth School of Business

Program Cost: $111,587
Average Starting Salary: $115,079
Average Debt Burden: $82,080

5. UV Darden School of Business

Program Cost: $95,900
Average Starting Salary: $109,335
Average Debt Burden: $80,528

6. Georgetown McDonough School of Business

Program Cost: $99,650
Average Starting Salary: $99,799
Average Debt Burden: $77,688

7. UM Ross School of Business

Program Cost: $100,389
Average Starting Salary: $111,047
Average Debt Burden: $77,607

8. Dartmouth Tuck School of Business

Program Cost: $117,930
Average Starting Salary: $115,302
Average Debt Burden: $75,081

9. USC Marshall School of Business

Program Cost: $103,300
Average Starting Salary: $97,921
Average Debt Burden: $70,340

10. Northwestern Kellogg School of Management

According to the data note provided by Bloomberg Businessweek, the schools listed here provided the program cost and average starting salary numbers in fall 2012. Average Debt Burden data was collected in the graduate survey that was part of the 2012 Best Business Schools ranking.

Ultimately, taking on student loan debt is a personal decision. If an M.B.A. will lead to a career with a salary commensurate with the cost of the debt you are about to incur, the decision may be an easy one. However, if you’re worried about the MBA debt load that awaits you, read these posts to learn how to lighten your MBA debt load, and how to pay for your MBA.

This first wave of Round 2 interview invitations went out yesterday from University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and Soojin Kwon Koh, director of MBA admissions, has shared her team’s plans to test out a supplemental interview process in China later this month.

Given the team-based, highly interactive nature of the program at UM Ross, Kwon says they are hoping to assess candidates’ prowess when it comes to working with others and communicating in a group setting. Therefore, when Kwon is in Beijing and Shanghai on January 26th and 27th, she will facilitate the group interview sessions between current students, alumni, and applicants to gain further insight into candidates’ fit with the UM Ross learning community.

The supplemental group interview is not a requirement for admission but is highly recommended, says Kwon, who explains that candidates invited to interview in those cities will still have a standard, one-on-one interview with an alumni or current student interviewer.

As the MBA admissions team at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School wraps up interviews this week for all round one candidates, Director Ankur Kumar recently took a moment to update the admissions blog with her colleagues’ reactions to the newly introduced team-based discussion component.

This new evaluation model gives candidates the chance to work together with a handful of their fellow applicants to solve real-world business scenarios as a team. The exercise demonstrates how they approach and analyze specific situations and interact with other people, two critical components of Wharton’s team-focused learning style.

Despite any initial trepidation over the change, Kumar says the experiment has been even more successful than the school had imagined. Applicants report that they enjoyed the opportunity to experience team work at Wharton firsthand, as well as the chance to connect with potential future classmates, says the MBA director.

From an admissions perspective, the director found it interesting to see candidates in “3-D” as she glimpsed how they act in their everyday professional lives. Teams and individuals displayed thoughtfulness and rigor in their problem-solving approaches, and Kumar remarks that no two teams were alike in the conclusion they drew, or the process by which they came to a conclusion.

Noting that several candidates exchanged contact information or headed out to celebratory drinks or dinner following the interview, Kumar adds,  “The most heartwarming part for us was to see how much you invested in and supported one other; waiting for everyone in your group to be done, high fiving each other, laughing together, this is the true hallmark of Wharton’s culture of collaboration and something we look forward to your bringing to the program.”

Round One decisions will be released on December 20th, and Kumar explains that the admissions team plans to use these next few weeks to review applications in their entirety after factoring in the additional insights gleaned from the team-based discussion and one-on-one interviews.

Applicants who are interested in experiencing Wharton in person should note that the Campus Visit Program officially ends on Thursday, December 6th, for the fall semester and will start back up again on January 28, 2013.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania recently released its 2012 MBA Career Management Career Statistics report offering an informative snapshot on graduates’ industry choices, compensation and geographic preferences.

For the class of 2012, 95.5 percent of students seeking employment had job offers in hand at the time of the report’s release. Compensation ranged from $20,000-250,000, with a median of $120,000. The median signing bonus among the graduating class was $20,000. Regarding location choices, 78.5 percent chose employment in the United States, while 21.5 percent accepted offers internationally.

The latest report shows an increase in opportunities in the technology sector, while financial services and consulting continued to be the most popular industry choices among graduates, with 41 and 26.7 percent, respectively, going into the two fields.

Director of MBA Career Management Maryellen Lamb noted in the Daily Pennsylvanian that this year’s results met her expectations, but she expressed some surprise at the slight decrease in students going into consulting.

“Last year and the year before that, consulting firms hired a lot, so they had a lot bigger classes,” Lamb said. “While it’s down since the last year, it’s pretty normalized historically.”

Meanwhile, on the internship front, 98.9 percent of Class of 2013 students seeking summer employment have already accepted positions.

Data for this report is collected year-round as MBA students report their offers through a career search portal that they use to search for jobs, or by phone if they receive a call. The next MBA class report comes out in fall 2013.

With entrepreneurship becoming the fifth most popular concentration at business schools today, we thought we’d share the Graduate Management Admission Council‘s recently published list of dozens of  b-schools that offer innovation and entrepreneurship concentrations. If you’ll remember from a few weeks ago, Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine released their annual ranking of the 2012 best graduate programs in entrepreneurship.

Several top-tier MBA programs have expanded the number of classes and centers devoted to entrepreneurship, and roughly 5% of full-time 2011 business school students  founded their own companies right after graduation.  The jump has been particularly notable at places like the Wharton School, Stanford Graduate School of Business and MIT Sloan School of Management.

For many people, an MBA program serves as a business incubator where they can develop their business idea or product in a low-risk atmosphere, and network and build relationships with partners and potential investors.

Granted, the best programs acknowledge that they don’t actually create entrepreneurs—they merely nurture innate ability. But whether you fall into the camp of nature or nurture as it relates to entrepreneurship, most people would agree that an entrepreneur needs to know the same basic skills as someone running a more established company. After all, every company began as a startup, launched by an entrepreneur.

If anything, you need to know all of the basics as opposed to specializing in one area. Our advice to current and prospective MBA students interested in entrepreneurship is to pay close attention in all of your classes—even in the areas you plan to outsource as soon as you have the budget.

(infographic courtesy of MBA.com)

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced Thursday it will establish the Wharton Public Policy Initiative using lead contributions totaling $11 million the school has received.

This initiative will offer independent, practical, timely, nonpartisan research and resources to government policymakers and key decision-makers and will have physical locations in Philadelphia and Washington, DC..

Forging this strong connection between the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Washington’s policymakers, the Public Policy Initiative will bridge the intellectual divide that currently exists between policymakers and the business community.

 “The Wharton Public Policy Initiative will greatly strengthen Penn’s presence in our nation’s Capital, and provide extraordinary opportunities and experiences for our faculty and students,” says university president Amy Gutmann in a media statement announcing the news.

“Not only will this Initiative advance the University’s mission, its very positive effects will also be felt by government, industry, and the business community at large.  We are grateful to alumni Marc J. Rowan, Marc A. Spilker, and Diane Isaacs Spilker for their transformative vision and outstanding generosity,” Gutmann adds.

Key to the success of the Wharton Public Policy Initiative will be students and faculty at Wharton and the University who will pursue new knowledge in public policy. In addition to a Faculty Director and Managing Director on Penn’s Philadelphia campus, the Initiative will have a Washington, DC-based Executive Director, who will be crucial to the dissemination of these novel resources in the Capital.

“The Wharton Public Policy Initiative is a critically important new endeavor for the Wharton School,” says Wharton School dean Thomas S. Robertson. “The Initiative will enable the School to further expand its reach as it pertains to the intersection of business and public policy. It will represent the pinnacle of public policy teaching, learning, and research and will allow Wharton to create knowledge that has impact upon business and government.”