Top MBA Employers: Building a Foundation with Chevron
Even with the preparation provided by an MBA, entering back into the business world after school can be daunting. California oil giant Chevron, one of the 20 largest companies in the world, offers a program that provides additional support and training for MBA grads to help them take their education to the next level. The oil company’s competitive business and commercial MBA program (BCMP) provides opportunities and resources for motivated grads aspiring to senior management positions. Chevron has made Glassdoor’s list of “Best Places to Work” eight times, and made Indeed’s list of Best Places to Work in 2017, likely due to the numerable opportunities for advancement and considerate treatment of employees.
According to Business Insider, “Chevron also has programs for new mothers and families, such as rooms where new mothers can nurse, a college-counseling program that guides employees and their families through the college application process, and a program that reimburses employees up to $5,000 for adoption-related expenses.”
Current MBA’s and recent grads interested in working at an oil will surely want to add Chevron to their list of potential employers.
The Chevron Business and Commercial MBA Program
During Chevron’s two-year business and commercial MBA program, students will have access to a variety of resources, including mentorship from senior members of the Chevron team. Program participants will do four six-month rotations involving projects in any of the following areas: strategy, planning and business analysis; supply chain/value chain optimization; business development; asset commercialization; decision analysis; hydrocarbon scheduling and logistics; hydrocarbon trading analytics; or marketing and sales.
Program recruits should have geographic flexibility, as the program can take them to California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, or Singapore. Participants can look forward to regular performance feedback on each assignment. The BCMP allows MBA grads to accelerate their career trajectory, to achieve more senior positions more quickly.
You can take a look at Chevron’s full BCMP brochure here.
Getting A Foot In the Door: Summer Internship Program
If you’re interested in pursuing Chevron’s business and commercial MBA program, applying for the company’s summer internship is the way to go. In fact, Chevron considers the 10-12 week internship program to be an extended interview that provides an in-depth view of how potential long-term recruits operate in a project-oriented setting. MBA’s can apply after their first year of grad school.
Though a long-term Chevron job offers a multitude of possible locations, the internship will take place in either Houston, Texas, or San Ramon, California (home to the original company headquarter’s). To be eligible for the internship, grads should have a minimum of three years of work experience between their undergrad and grad educations. Chevron looks for adaptability, collaboration skills, analytical chops, and leadership qualities in its internship recruits.
Chevron MBA internships take place in several U.S. cities, including its Houston offices.
Real Humans of the Drexel LeBow Class of 2019
Over 100 years since the founding of what would become the Drexel University Bennett S. LeBow College of Business, the business school, located in the heart of Philadelphia, has steadily transformed into one of the nation’s most dynamic landing spots for MBA candidates. Alongside the LeBow MBA, Masters and Executive programs, the school offers a highly—regarded part-time and Online MBA, both of which have been recognized among the best in the country by U.S. News & World Report and the Financial Times.
With so many acclaimed AACSB-accredited programs, its only natural that the LeBow College of Business would be cultivating an increasingly diverse MBA class. These students have an opportunity to study accounting, business analytics, supply chain management & logistics, economics, finance, general business and marketing, taught by over 100 full-time professors at the business school. Currently, around 3,800 students are enrolled in various graduate, undergraduate, and doctoral programs. An estimated 1,020 are enrolled in the graduate programs alone, making LeBow one of the largest private business schools in the country.
Outside Gerri C. LeBow Hall, the center of Drexel’s LeBow College of Business
Of the 3,800 aforementioned students at LeBow, approximately 450 come from 60 countries outside of the United States. The numbers, however, only tell a small story about the Drexel LeBow Class of 2019. To learn more about what it means to earn a graduate degree from LeBow, we interview five current students, who come from several corners of the world: from Asia, to Europe, to right here in Philly. Read on to see what’s in store for these students at LeBow and what life after an MBA and Masters may look like.
The California MBA Program Guide
If you’re looking to earn a California MBA, where should you go to school? Should you choose a top MBA program in Los Angeles or San Francisco? Both cities offer beautiful weather, gorgeous beaches, and world-class business education, but is one location better than the other?
Los Angeles vs. San Francisco
To get started, it’s necessary to compare the cost of living in Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to Numbeo, the world’s largest database containing user contributed data about cities, San Francisco is far and away the more expensive place to live. You would need $7,748.24 in San Francisco, CA to afford the same lifestyle that you can have for $5,700 in Los Angeles. That’s just over $2,000 more per month needed to live in San Francisco, and here’s how that’s broken down.
- Consumer Prices:98 percent higher in San Francisco
- Rent Prices: 51 percent higher in San Francisco
- Restaurant Prices: 62 percent higher in San Francisco
- Groceries Cost: 8 percent higher in San Francisco
- Local Purchasing Power: 77 percent higher in San Francisco
Right off the bat, it’s obvious that the cost of rent (real estate) is what will eat up most of your paycheck in San Francisco, but is that offset by anything? Here are the other things to consider when choosing between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
- Industries
- Los Angeles is ranked top in the country for manufacturing with over 500,000 workers in the industry. Other top industries include banking and finance (more than 100 foreign and domestic banks), entertainment, and tourism.
- San Francisco, on the other hand, is known as Silicon Valley (with San Jose) for its technology companies and startups (Intel, Apple, Genentech, Google, Uber, and Twitter). It’s also a great city for finance, global business, medical science, biotechnology, tourism, and fashion apparel (home of the Levi Strauss & Co headquarters).
- Economic Development: According to the Center for Jobs, San Francisco far and away outperforms Los Angeles in terms of economic growth and development with the Bay Area growing year-over-year while LA has struggled with almost consistent decreases.
- Top Companies: California is home to 53 Fortune 500 companies, second only to NYC. And more of those companies are located in the Bay Area compared to Los Angeles. San Francisco is home to Apple (3), McKesson (5), Chevron (19), and Wells Fargo (25). While Los Angeles is home to Aecom (161), CBRE (214), and Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co (320).
Los Angeles vs San Francisco MBA Programs
The next step is to compare the top three MBA programs in each city. In particular, we wanted to take a look at the tuition rates (two years), GMAT averages, and post-graduation salaries at each program in each city to get a well-rounded picture.
There are a few things to note right away.
- San Francisco is home to more highly ranked MBA programs with two ranking in the top ten on every list. However, it’s important to note that both cities have programs that rank well and are considered top tier schools.
- The average tuition in each city is fairly even. However, the most expensive ($137,00) and the most affordable ($77,000) schools are located in San Francisco, whereas Los Angeles is more even regarding tuition across the board.
- You’ll need a better GMAT score to go to a school in San Francisco, and that GMAT score translates into a higher salary after graduation. San Francisco graduates earn about $11,000 more per year compared to their LA counterparts.
Here’s how it all breaks down per school.
Top 3 Los Angeles MBA Programs
Anderson School of Management – UCLA
The UCLA Anderson School of Management offers a full-time MBA, a part-time MBA, an Executive MBA, and a UCLA-NUS Global MBA (Asia Pacific) program. It’s considered one of the top business schools in the world, ranking 6th in the Economist, 15th in Forbes, 16th in the U.S. News & World Report, and 25th in Financial Times.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $117,176
- GMAT Averages: 719
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $119,964
Marshall School of Business – USC
The Marshall School of Business at USC offers a full-time MBA program, a part-time MBA, an Executive MBA, and IBEAR (International Business Education and Research) MBA, and an Online MBA program. The school’s full-time MBA program is ranked: 20th in the U.S. News & World Report, 33rd in Forbes, 59th in Financial Times, and 65th in the Economist.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $116,361
- GMAT Averages: 703
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $115,309
The Paul Merage School of Business – University of California, Irvine
The Paul Merage School of Business has both a full-time MBA program as well as a part-time fully-employed MBA program. In addition, the school offers an Executive MBA and a Health Care Executive MBA program. The business school is ranked highly across multiple rankings including 41st in Forbes, 42nd in the U.S. News & World Report, 56th in the Economist, 64th in Financial Times.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $87,661
- GMAT Averages: 652
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $97,808
Top 3 San Francisco MBA Programs
Haas School of Business – UC Berkeley
The Haas School of Business offers a full-time MBA, part-time MBA, and Executive MBA program. Haas is ranked as one of the top business school’s in the world ranking in the top ten on every list: 7th overall in U.S. News & World Report and 7th overall in the Economist, as well as 9th overall in Forbes, and 10th overall in the Financial Times.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $117,444
- GMAT Averages: 725
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $125,573
Stanford University Graduate School of Business
The Stanford University Graduate School of Business offers only a full-time MBA program, but it’s one of, if not the top two-year program in the world. When looking at how Stanford GSB stacks up to the competition, the rankings speak for themselves with all in the top ten and most in the top five, including: 1st overall in the Financial Times, 2nd overall in Forbes, 4th in the U.S. News & World Report, and 9th in the Economist.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $137,736
- GMAT Averages: 733
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $144,455
UC Davis Graduate School of Management
At the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, MBA applicants can apply to the full-time MBA or the part-time MBA program. Once again, UC Davis is one of the top schools in the world, ranking 37th in the U.S. News & World Report, 63rd in Forbes, and 67th in the Economist.
- Tuition Rates (two years): $77,698
- GMAT Averages: 669
- Post-Grad Salaries (Mean): $97,695
California MBA Breakdown in Charts
When breaking down the data between MBA programs in Los Angeles and San Francisco, here’s what it looks like
California MBA Tuition (Los Angeles vs. San Francisco)
California MBA GMAT Averages
California MBA Post-Graduation Salaries
The Top 5 Reasons Diversity MBA Conferences Should Be on Your Recruiting Calendar
Pictured above: Tuck second-year MBA students Bianca Goins, Sadé Lawrence, and Jodine Gordon.
More than 10,000 MBA students, business school representatives, recruiters, and business executives filled the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia late last month for one of the largest career conferences serving minority professionals. The conference has been around since 1970, but for the first time this year the National Black MBA Association (NBMBAA) and Prospanica, the association of Hispanic professionals, joined forces to present it. The result was an incredible opportunity for attendees to network with companies and each other, take advantage of career development programming, and interview for and secure job offers from hundreds of companies spanning multiple industries.
Cornell’s S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management had a group of approximately 55 students attend, a mix of first-year and second-year students, according to Cynthia Saunders-Cheatham, Executive Director of Johnson’s Career Management Center.
“It was double what we have had in recent years, and perhaps the largest attendance we ever had for an MBA diversity conference,” she said. “Having a joint NBMBAA/Prospanica conference, in addition to the Philadelphia location that was driving distance away [from Ithaca, NY, where Johnson is located], helped to drive attendance.” The connections that students made while there have already resulted in multiple job offers, she added.
While securing a job or internship is a primary reason many MBA students choose to attend the National Black/Prospanica conference and others like it, that’s just one of many potential benefits events like this offer. Given that this most recent conference was right here in our hometown of Philadelphia, we went to check things out for ourselves. Through conversations with attendees, school representatives, and recruiters, we’ve compiled the following list of reasons why this year’s crop of applicants should be sure to add diversity MBA conferences to their recruiting calendar next summer and fall.
1. Unparalleled Recruiter Access—Including Many That Don’t Come to Campus
The Career Expo, which took place on the last two days of the five-day National Black/Prospanica conference, filled a cavernous hall in the Convention Center and included booths from close to 300 companies spanning dozens of industries. Among them were coveted post-MBA tech employers like Google and Amazon, consulting industry leaders including Bain & Company and Accenture, and financial services firms such as BlackRock, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. There was a continuous gaggle at the Google booth, and one of its MBA internship recruiters, Tanya Choudhury, had to resort to wearing a sign by the second day explaining that she’d lost her voice.
Big pharma and healthcare were also well represented, with booths attended by recruiting representatives from drug maker AstraZeneca to medical products and equipment company Zimmer Biomet and many in between. Leading consumer packaged goods (CPG) firms including PepsiCo, General Mills, and Proctor & Gamble were also there, as were oil and gas giants like BP, Chevron, and Exxon.
Morgan Stanley was one of almost 300 exibitors in the conference’s packed Career Expo.
But there were also plenty of organizations that are perhaps less top of mind as potential MBA recruiters—the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of State, Teach for America, and USAID, for example—who were just as eager to share how highly they value the MBA skillset. Dozens of leading business schools also had booths, largely to provide support and serve as gathering places for students who were attending, but also with an eye out for promising diverse talent. For example, Roberto Martinez, a Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant for Dartmouth College—home to the Tuck School of Business—was eagerly distributing glossy handouts touting the school’s varied career opportunities, commitment to diverse hiring practices, and excellent benefits. “We’re here not only to support students but also to hire more diverse staff to campus,” he said.
For Tuck second-year MBA student Bianca Goins, the breadth of companies at the expo was a big part of the draw. “I wanted a diverse group of companies to look at in a single spot,” she said. “There are so many companies here, and as second-year you can really come and pick and choose the experiences you want to have.”
Tiffany Anderson, a second-year student at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, was also impressed by the sheer number of companies present. A self-proclaimed conference veteran, she also attended National Black last year, as well as conferences presented by the Forté Foundation, the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, Management Leadership for Tomorrow, and JumpStart. “Out of all the diversity conferences, I would certainly say this is the flagship,” she said. “Wow! There are A LOT of companies here,” she recalled thinking to herself as she walked in. More so than last year, before National Black and Prospanica teamed up, she added.
“I have seen the most people—students from many different schools and recruiters from many different functional areas of interest,” she continued. “It seems to be the most diverse in terms of attendees, degree of programming, and companies in attendance. For the majority of people, this is going to be one of the best to attend.” Anderson estimates that there were probably 30 or so Goizueta students there, a mix of first- and second-years.
2. Multiple Touch Points and Opportunities for Face Time
For some students, certainly, the primary purpose in attending the conference is to land a job. Second-year IU Kelley School of Business MBA student Henrique Barbosa, a native of Brazil pursuing travel hospitality, had a simple answer when asked why he was there: “To get a job!” He acknowledged that most of the firms he was interested in only conduct first-round interviews at the conference followed by second-round interviews on site, which lessened the likelihood of his leaving with an offer in hand. “But it would be great if it happened,” he said.
But several other students were less interested in job or internship offers—or even in early round interviews. For Jodine Gordon (Tuck ’18), the biggest factor in her decision to attend was hearing success stories from Tuck grads whose higher-level touch points with conference recruiters later helped them secure offers. “I have a couple companies on my list, but really I just want to meet as many people as possible so they can get to know me and I can get face time,” she said.
Sadé Lawrence, also a second-year student at Tuck, was likewise attracted by the opportunity to get in front of recruiters in person. “For a lot of opportunities you might be interested in, you start online at a website, applying through data base,” she said. “But coming here they now have a face with your name, and there are all kinds of organic connections that can happen,” she added. “It’s kind of amazing that you are able to build connections with people even at such a big conference, but you are. You make contacts and get lots of face time—so much more so than you can blindly through a website,” she continued. “What I have heard more of is people have an interaction with a recruiter here that leads to an interview later—here is more about entering the pipeline.”
Tuck’s Goins has taken the opportunity to network with recruiters who don’t make it to Tuck’s campus, but also those who do. “With every interaction, you are getting a more nuanced understanding of the company and can take that information and use it in subsequent interactions.”
3. Valuable Chances to Network with Peers
Goizueta’s Anderson interned in operations at Google over the summer—an opportunity she got through another diversity conference—and has been offered a full-time position on the tech giant’s Mountain View campus after she graduates. Despite having that full-time offer in hand, attending the conference still made lots of sense.
Kelley School second-year student Luis Vilchez Kupres, a native of Peru, also converted his summer internship—in supply chain operations at Cummins—into a full-time offer. So his reasons for attending the conference were not to get a job. ”I am here to support fellow Kelley first- and second-years and network a little more,” he said. He also gets to reconvene with students from other schools he met at last year’s Prospanica conference. “Often, you connect with somebody and they will help you connect with someone else,” he said. “Networking definitely helps—even among other MBA students.”
Tiffany Anderson, Goizueta MBA ’18, a diversity MBA conference veteran
For the Google-bound Anderson, the value of peer networking can’t be stressed enough. Being able to connect with students from other schools is the part she finds most enjoyable—but it’s also strategic. “When candidates are selecting a school they like to look at the size of the network they are going to get—and that’s great,” she said. “But the way I see it, I don’t have to be at Stanford or Wharton because I have friends at Stanford and Wharton. So in a way that’s kind of my network, too.”
“You have that domino effect,” she continued. If she’s trying to connect with someone at a company where she doesn’t have a contact or her classmates don’t have contacts, she can reach out to a friend at another school to see if there’s someone in their network. “Some might say, ‘Well, they’re a peer, they’re not an employer, they’re not going to get me a job.’ But there is so much more benefit to expanding your network. I don’t think everyone understands that.”
Of course, peer networking can be a two-way street. “My motivation to expand my network comes from wanting to help others as well,” Anderson said. “When you are part of these diversity networks, one of the great things is you are going to have a friend who says, ‘Do you know someone who can help me with this?’ And I can say, ‘Well, I met someone at a conference who does that very thing and I’m happy to put y’all in touch.’”
The Best MBA Return on Investment in the Houston Metro
One of the top things an MBA looks for when choosing a business school is the return on investment. Return on investment, or ROI, is one of the most common profitability ratios, and an easy way to determine if an MBA is “worth” your time and money. We took a look at the Houston metro, and ranked the top business schools in the area based on their ROI, comparing average starting salaries with tuition costs. Continue reading…
