What They’re Saying: Spring Break is Sadly Almost Over
While the East Coast of the U.S. is catching up with another pleasant April storm cyclone, the rest of the business school community is back at work, shedding off the sunburned skin of a spring break well had. With the end of the formal academic year drawing near, students are preparing for the home stretch.
Check out some of the things business schools around the U.S., Canada, and UK are saying about the end of spring break and what you need to know before the academic year closes out.
Spring Break is almost over. It’s time to start thinking about Summer! Register tpdayfor @BaruchCollege #summersession courses & finish your degree early! #BaruchSummer18 #BeBaruch #academicexcellence pic.twitter.com/UJWNEyy7kU
— Baruch College (@BaruchCollege) April 4, 2018
Snowy spring break! #LeBow MBA & MS students are in Romania meeting industry leaders, including @fitbit. Check our Instagram story for live updates. pic.twitter.com/anS73QiRQl
— LeBow College (@LeBow) March 26, 2018
It’s OFFICIALLY spring break! Our MBAs will be in China, Colombia, and Brazil getting a hands on #GlobalBusiness experience 🗺💼✈ pic.twitter.com/BDaPceTOCa
— Johnson at Cornell (@CornellMBA) March 31, 2018
From climbing volcanoes to discovering secrets of luxury marketing, spring break for some Questrom students was about enhancing their business acumen through cultural immersion. https://t.co/lA6oQsdOCB
— BU Questrom (@BUQuestrom) March 29, 2018
It’s extra quiet at the #RadySchool during Spring Break! We miss our students, but hope you are enjoying your break! pic.twitter.com/Kk2LaYMLk2
— Rady School (@RadySchool) March 28, 2018
The Best Business Schools for Landing Top Consulting Jobs
Clear Admit recently explored which business schools help prepare MBAs the most for a career in consulting, which you can read below.
With starting salaries in the $140,000 to $150,000 range and a customary $25,000 signing bonus on top of that, it’s no wonder so many business school students target the prestige consulting firms known as the “MBB”—McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company—as their post-MBA landing pads. That $170,000+ annual compensation package can quickly cut any MBA loan debt you may have taken on down to size.
Indeed, management consulting has been one of the most coveted career paths for fresh MBA grads for ages. And though the technology industry has in recent years been stealing some grads from the consulting industry’s traditional slice of the pie, the most recent MBA employment reports reveal that consulting is already making a comeback against tech at certain schools.
The opportunity to work with a range of clients comprised of many of the world’s most celebrated businesses across industries—tech included—is part of the appeal of consulting. In many ways, a top consulting gig allows MBA grads to continue their management education while getting paid for it—and further honing their skills and expertise by helping solve a wide variety of business challenges. And, not for nothing, breaking into the MBB is a highly competitive pursuit—one that almost assures that your colleagues will be smart, driven people you’ll get a lot out of working with.
Finally, where the top consulting firms are choosing to find their talent reflects on the quality of the education those schools’ students are getting. In many ways, the hiring practices of the MBB can serve as a gold star standard of sorts for MBA programs.
Elite Firms Hire Grads from Elite Business Schools
The crème de la crème of leading business school talent has headed toward the top consulting firms for decades—and performed well there—creating a virtuous circle of sorts in which the firms’ appetite for such talent only grows. And while this piece focuses on MBB, we should note that a host of other consulting firms—Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, Accenture, Strategy&, and Oliver Wyman among others—are also highly prized post-MBA destinations.
If you are looking to see which business schools send the greatest percentage of their graduates into consulting overall, don’t miss our September 2017 analysis of leading consulting industry feeder schools. Which schools top the list? And what stands out about how these schools successfully train students for careers in consulting?
Looking at Class of 2016 graduates, the University of Virginia’s Darden School led the pack, with 38 percent of its graduates heading into consulting. Columbia Business School was next, sending 35 percent, followed closely by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which sent 33 percent.
The 2017 employment reports, which have been released since our analysis last fall, show some shifts year over year. Darden tied with Emory’s Goizueta School of Business in terms of the percentage of Class of 2017 grads who headed into consulting, with each school sending 34 percent. Close on their heels were Columbia, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School. All four sent 33 percent of their most recent graduating class off to consulting firms.
2 Non-U.S. Schools Lead All Others in Consulting-Bound ’17 MBA Grads
But year after year, one thing remains the same. INSEAD, with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, beats all leading U.S. business schools when it comes to consulting. INSEAD’s 2016 MBA employment report, detailing employment outcomes for December 2015 and July 2016 INSEAD grads, shows that 46 percent went into consulting. And the most recent figures reveal that almost a full half—49 percent—of the 1,029 students who completed the INSEAD MBA program in December 2016 and July 2017 chose to either enter or return to the consulting field.
We should note here that INSEAD is distinct from many other schools in that it includes sponsored students who are returning to their pre-MBA employers among its hiring stats. This is in contrast to many U.S. schools, where the reported number and percentage of students hired by sector and employer corresponds to those students actively seeking employment, excluding sponsored students. Of the 49 percent of INSEAD 2017 grads headed into consulting, 33 percent were new hires and the remaining 16 percent were returnees.
London Business School (LBS) was the runner-up for the Class of 2017, sending 41 percent of grads into consulting. This was a 6 percentage-point gain over the school’s previous class of MBA graduates. Like INSEAD, LBS’s reported sector designation and top employer information includes sponsored students, only its employment report does not disclose what percentage of the class those returning students represent.
How Toronto Schools Can Help You Pay for Your MBA
Earning your MBA can be an expensive prospect. In Canada, tuition at the most expensive MBA programs can cost more than $100,000 for full-time and part-time students. This can be difficult for some low-income applicants.
So, what are some Toronto schools doing to help offset the cost of tuition, living, and other expenses to pay for your MBA? Continue reading…
Celebrating Diversity During One Wharton Week at UPenn
Clear Admit recently explored how the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has become a premiere institution of diversity among U.S. business schools.
As part of a commitment to celebrating and examining diversity, the MBA community at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has, since 2015, observed an annual Return on Equality (ROE) Week—recently renamed One Wharton Week. Throughout the week, held this year from February 12th through 15th, MBA students gather to build community and create an open dialogue about diversity through lectures, panels, and other special events.
“One Wharton Week has evolved in the three years since Return on Equality was founded, but at its core, it’s still the greatest demonstration of how the Wharton community can come together and learn from each other,” Simone Thomas, WG’18, co-president of ROE, explained in a news story on the Wharton website. ROE is a student-led coalition with the stated vision of making Wharton “a pioneering institution that deliberately equips students to be leaders and advocates of inclusive organizational practices, enabling individuals to be recognized and valued as their whole selves.”
One Wharton Week is made possible by a coalition of clubs and student organizations from across the university that come together to put on programming. In the mix this year, the Wharton Analytics Club hosted an event examining bias in technology and algorithms. The Media & Entertainment Club also screened the movie Get Out, which addresses a range of topics related to racism, and followed up the viewing with small group discussions.
“We wanted this collaborative effort to express the deep commitment from all groups to diversity and inclusion work here at Wharton,” Thomas said.
Other events included a discussion of personal faith, a talk from Vice Dean of the MBA program Howard Kaufold entitled “The Business of Equity,” and an examination of the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo talk was one of the most highly anticipated events for the week, staged amid an intense political climate on campus and many efforts to make a difference put forth by students, organizations, and administrators.
“We’re hoping to facilitate an open discussion in which we can understand the experience and thoughts from both genders and provide a platform for people to ask questions about a very uncomfortable and complicated topic,” Thomas explained. A full schedule of the events hosted during One Wharton Week is listed here.
Although One Wharton Week is largely student run—with members of the MBA Classes of 2018 and 2019 in charge of securing speakers, promoting the week, and advising on content—it also receives strong administrative support. This partnership between the administration and students was formed in 2017 when Kaufold asked members of the Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) Steering Committee to meet with students to collaborate and advise on the MBA program’s diversity and inclusion strategy.
Below is a sneak peek inside One Wharton Week 2018.
What are the Greenest Business Schools in the U.S.?
Earlier this month, the Global Hub at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification, becoming only the second building on the Northwestern campus to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest green building rating.
The 415,000-square-foot Global Hub, which opened in March 2017, was designed with a low carbon footprint in mind. It is the largest of Northwestern’s 12 LEED-certified buildings. “Achieving LEED Platinum certification for the Global Hub underscores Kellogg’s strong commitment to sustainability,” Kellogg Chief Operating Officer William Garrett said in a press release. “A world-class facility demands world-class practices, and the Global Hub checks all of the boxes: It minimizes its carbon footprint, is comfortable and healthy for its occupants, and encourages collaboration and a sense of community.”
The building is a marvel of modern architecture and design. It taps into geothermal energy systems underneath the ground for efficient heating and cooling and uses nearly 6,000 fixtures of LED lighting to reduce energy use. The building also has an advanced ventilation system to circulate fresh ar and uses daylight sensors to minimize the need for artificial lighting.
Overall, the Global Hub earned 85 out of a possible 110 points on the LEED scale, including:
- 26 out of 35 points for energy and atmosphere,
- 7 out of 14 points for materials and resources,
- 8 out of 10 points for water efficiency,
- 23 out of 26 points for location,
- 11 out of 15 points for indoor environmental quality, and
- 10 out of 10 points for the design process and regional priority categories.
“We are proud to have successfully integrated best-in-class sustainability with a stunning architectural design, proving that excellence in design and sustainability are not mutually exclusive,” said Bonnie Humphrey, director of design for facilities.
Of course, Kellogg isn’t the only business school to embrace environmentally conscious building practices for its new facilities. It’s a practice we’re seeing across the board at various top schools.
For example, Harvard Business School has a Sustainability Plan that was adopted in October 2014 to reduce greenhouse gases, improve energy efficiency, reduce water usage and waste, and more. Already, the university has cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 49 percent, its energy use by 33 percent, and its water use by four percent.
MIT Sloan School of Management’s newest building, the Joan and William A Porter 1967 Center for Management Education, also known as E62, was designed with energy efficiency in mind as well. Among its sustainable features are light-sensitive window shades, a green roof, and an irrigation system that minimizes water use by responding to changes in weather.
And not to be left out, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business designed its recently constructed Chou Hall to become the nation’s greenest academic building. In addition to LEED Platinum certification, Chou Hall was designed to attain WELL certification, an added accolade given to buildings that promote user health and well-being. Toward this goal, its design includes rainwater cisterns and 24,300 square feet of exterior windows in addition to efficient heating, cooling, and lighting systems.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
Admissions Tip: Helping You Choose Your Business School
Deposit deadlines for Round 1 decisions are looming, many successful applicants are facing the enviable—but often agonizing—decision of choosing between programs. Though we know that those of you in this position will already be juggling an overwhelming amount of information about the schools on your short lists, we wanted to offer a few pointers to consider as you identify and evaluate the most important facts and factors in choosing between business schools.
Immerse yourself.
If you have not yet visited campus, go to the school and see what you think of the environment. Be sure to attend classes, talk with students, tour the facilities, and so on. Even if you have already made the trip, it’s a good idea to attend the school’s events for admitted students to meet your potential classmates. After all, these are the folks whose thoughts you will be hearing in class for two years and who will making up your future network.
Consider your immediate priorities.
Think about the location, size, teaching method, etc. Are you looking for a close-knit, “we’re all in this together” sort of experience, or would you prefer to attend classes and then disappear into a large city with a few classmates or old friends? Do you need the benefits of a large university to pursue coursework in a specific field? Do you crave lengthy discussions with faculty? Do you have family or a significant other who might need to consider your location? Are you strong in qualitative areas but looking to refine your skills in quantitative subjects? Is there a teaching method that might better address your weaknesses or best suit your learning style? Reflecting on the relative importance of each of these questions might help you to organize your thoughts about and the information on each program.
Look farther forward.
In addition to the experience you would have as a student, try to get a sense for the school’s track record in your target field. For example, if you hope to become a strategy consultant after school, take a look at each program’s placement statistics with the firms that are of interest to you. Talk to the career management office and find out which firms came to campus and how many offers were made. You might also try to contact alumni who work in your target field and see what they have to say about their alma mater’s strength in that area. A final option is to approach the HR departments of the firm you are likely to target and ask for their opinion of the programs on your list. This is also a nice excuse to build rapport with a potential future employer.
Think big.
Beyond the job you hope to secure immediately after school, consider the program’s regional and global brand. For example, if you are looking for work in London, you might investigate whether the school in question has an active alumni club in that city. Meanwhile, if you dream of working in Los Angeles but are debating between two programs on the East Coast, it might be important to determine which has the greater West Coast presence.
Do some quick analysis.
Two years ago, we launched MBA DecisionWire. This tool allows you to do searches on each of the schools at which you have offers, and see the decisions of your predecessors. When you have made your final decision, please head over to MBA DecisionWire, and add your entry; this will help future MBA candidates as they seek out their best MBA program options.
These are just a few general tips to get you thinking about how to make your b-school decision. It goes without saying that this is a once in a lifetime decision, so it certainly makes sense to do your homework and fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each of your options. Rankings are a good starting point for a school search but should not be the deciding factor. Reading in-depth, independent reports on each program can be helpful, so be sure to check out the Clear Admit School Guides for their extensive cross-school comparisons on placement, class composition, campus life and more. Another thing to remember that the shoe is finally on the other foot, and the schools are now the ones marketing themselves to you. Be sure to take advantage of their offers to answer any questions you may have.
