MBA Jobs: Business Operations Manager
Operations management is a field that’s key to business. While it has nothing to do with operations in a medical sense—obviously, this is an MBA website after all—the field’s multidisciplinary nature may make it difficult to understand at first. So let’s get to it! Continue reading…
After Extensive Search, Stanford GSB Names New Assistant Dean of Admissions
The void created last August when long-time Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) MBA admissions czar Derrick Bolton left has been filled. The school announced today that Kirsten Moss has been named the new assistant dean and director of MBA admissions and financial aid.
Moss is no stranger to Stanford’s admissions office, having served as part of the team from 2004 to 2010, first as a consultant, then as associate director of evaluation and finally as director of MBA admissions. During her time with the Palo Alto school, she managed the evaluation, marketing and operations teams while also developing a new approach to assessing leadership capability. Prior to joining Stanford, she led admissions and financial aid at her alma mater, Harvard Business School (HBS), from 1995 to 2001. She immediately preceded Deirdre Leopold, who would go on to hold HBS’s key admissions director role for the next decade and a half.
Moss left Stanford in 2010 to work as a consultant for global executive search firm Egon Zehnder before launching her own consulting firm in 2012, which she has run for the past five years. Over the same span of time she also obtained her doctorate in psychology—with a focus in organizational behavior—from William James College, which boasts the largest graduate psychology program in New England.
“Kirsten has a strong understanding of our school’s vision and immediately impressed us with her ideas for connecting with the next generation of students making a positive, measurable difference in the world,” Stanford GSB Dean Jonathan Levin said in a statement announcing her appointment. “Kirsten brings a wealth of knowledge and experience—from top-tier MBA admissions programs to business consulting—and will provide fresh insight as we achieve new levels of excellence.”
Moss’s appointment concludes an extensive search chaired by Stanford Senior Academic Dean Yossi Feinberg that included interviews with faculty, staff, students and alumni. She will assume the new role on June 1 and will report to Feinberg. “Kirsten has deep experience in admissions and leadership talent evaluation both inside and outside Stanford GSB,” Feinberg said in a statement.
Moss, who holds both MBA and bachelor’s degrees from Harvard, is excited to return to Stanford, where she will manage the admissions and financial team and have responsibility for shaping the school’s vision for how to continue to reach and recruit the world’s most highly qualified MBA candidates. Stanford has long held the claim as the most selective business school in the world. Last year, it admitted just 6.1 percent of the more than 8,000 hopefuls who applied.
“Stanford GSB has a rich legacy of equipping students with the tools necessary to create change—individually, within organizations and throughout the world,” Moss said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to join the team in this new capacity as we work together to cultivate the next generation of leaders poised to make an impact.”
Learn more about Stanford GSB’s new assistant dean and director of MBA admissions here.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
What Bain & Company Looks for in MBA Hires
Bain & Company—widely considered one of the most elite consulting firms in the world—is a coveted post-MBA destination for students at top business schools in every part of the globe. Headquartered in Boston with 53 offices in 34 countries around the world, Bain employs more than 7,000 people and counts as its clients leading Fortune 500 companies, as well as nonprofit and government organizations. And business is booming.
According to Keith Bevans, Global Head of Consultant Recruiting, the company has grown at a rate of 15 percent a year for the past 20 years, with no slowdown in sight. “We hire a little over 400 consultants a year—and that growth comes from the top business schools in the world,” he says. While the company primarily targets top-20 schools for MBA recruiting, it hires from more than 60 schools around the world and is committed to finding the best talent wherever it can.
Bevans is a Bain-lifer. He started as an associate consultant out of MIT, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering. He left Bain to get his MBA at Harvard Business School but returned upon graduation and has been there ever since. For much of his career, he was a client-facing partner in the firm’s Performance Improvement practice, with a focus on processes to improve effectiveness and efficiencies. Now he’s putting that expertise to work for his own company, and he couldn’t be happier.
His allegiance to the firm is clear, and it’s based in great part on his intimate understanding of its culture, which he describes as steadfastly collaborative and supportive. And he’s not alone. Bain frequently tops the “Best Places to Work” lists for Glassdoor, Vault and Consulting magazine, with employees praising its “great people and culture” and calling it “an incredible place to learn” and “the best place to start your career.”
It’s people, too, set Bain apart, Bevans agrees. “They are very smart, very passionate, maniacally focused on making a difference in whatever they are doing—and they wrap all of that in a layer of humility, which I think is very rare to find.”
Bain Partner Keith Bevans, Global Head of Consultant Recruiting
But interns alone are not enough to keep up with Bain’s growth. “It varies from year to year in terms of how many of our full-time hires are former summer interns, new full-time hires or former consultants. But the internship program never fills up the whole group.”MBA graduates are a big and important part of the company’s hiring, and many start out as interns in the 10-week summer associate program between their first and second years of business school. “It’s definitely an important on-ramp,” he says of the internship program, adding that it’s also a valuable opportunity for both Bain and its interns to determine fit. Notably, 90 percent of interns return to work for Bain full-time, Bevans adds. And there’s not a maximum cap on intern hires. “Our summer program is limited only by how many great students we can find,” he says. “We don’t have a target—rather I like to think of it as a minimum. If we find more great people, we will always go over whatever we set out for.” Which means there are opportunities for second-year students who may not have targeted Bain or consulting in their first year.
But interns alone are not enough to keep up with Bain’s growth. “It varies from year to year in terms of how many of our full-time hires are former summer interns, new full-time hires or former consultants. But the internship program never fills up the whole group.”
Don’t miss Clear Admit’s exclusive interview with Bevans, in which he talks about the firm’s commitment to employee training and support, goes into detail about Bain’s MBA recruiting process, shares where he looks and what he looks for in MBA hires and more. Our thanks to Bevans for making the time to share more about Bain with the Clear Admit audience.
Corporate Recruiter Q&A: Bain & Company’s Keith Bevans
Clear Admit: What sets Bain apart—not only among other consulting firms but also as an employer or company overall?
Keith Bevans: There are a couple of things about Bain people that set us apart. In my role, I have had the opportunity to travel to offices around the world hiring people, and what I have found is that Bain people are passionate about both the work they are doing and the things they are doing outside of work. They really jump right in with both feet. When you align that around our goal of having our clients be successful, you can really see the passion Bainies have for their clients—it just oozes out of them. We are having a big impact on our clients, and we are hiring people who are really energized by that.
With that as our starting point, we put them in an environment where we really do act like one team and do everything we can to support them in their professional life. From our global training programs to our onboarding program to the career counseling we provide—it’s all aligned around helping them be successful and be the best they can be. Bain people are people who want to have an impact.
Relative to other firms I think we are different in the sense that we have a very collaborative culture. We also have tremendously deep expertise in every major sector of the economy, and we bring that to our clients. “We’ve studied this and analyzed this, but why don’t we marry that with your expertise?” we’ll say to clients. We are not trying to prove that we are smarter than our clients but to work collaboratively with them to position them to succeed.
CA: How important are MBAs in your overall hiring? How many MBAs do you hire each year, both interns and full-time? Are you continuing to grow at the 15 percent rate you’ve enjoyed for so many years?
KB: MBA talent is a big and really important source of talent for us. For the last 20 years, we have been growing on average at a rate of 15 percent per year. That makes for a phenomenal slide when I put it in front of recruits. We hire a little over 400 consultants a year, and that growth comes from the top business schools in the world. The bulk of our targeted efforts focus on top 20 programs, but we have hired from almost 60 different MBA programs around the world.
With our growth, our primary focus is to make sure we are finding the most talented people out there. The breadth of schools from which we’ve hired shows that we are continuing to do innovative things through the Bain Passport and Webinar series to connect with students wherever they are. Our intern program this summer is once again—for the third or fourth year in a row—the largest we have run as a firm. It is definitely an important on-ramp, if you will. And 90 percent of the MBA interns who come for the summer return to Bain afterwards. We find the best, bring them in for the summer and very often they start their careers with us.
As for the 10 percent who don’t return—most of the time it’s actually more of a mutual thing. Maybe they tried consulting and decided it’s not a fit for them. And here’s another example of the supportive part about Bain: Even the interns who don’t come back often get support from the people who worked with them at Bain. They help them identify what parts of the internship were the right fit, and what roles might be a better match and then they help connect them with people who can help. After all, they are still Bain alums and still part of the Bain family.
Which Graduate Business School Students Have The Highest GMAT Scores?
Along with required work experience and undergraduate prerequisites, prospective MBA students also look at the average scores on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) for a certain school they are interested in applying to.
According the Graduate Management Admission Council, the exam is used as part of the admissions process for more than 6,100 graduate programs around the world. A GMAC study found that 261,248 GMAT exams were taken by prospective MBA students during the 2016 test year. The report also shows that less than 30 percent of scores were 650 or higher. The GMAT has a maximum score of 800. Continue reading…
7 Takeaways from the 2018 U.S. News Business School Ranking
The schools making up the top 10 in this year’s U.S. News & World Report ranking of the nation’s best MBA programs—released today—were exactly the same as last year. That said, there are a smattering of surprises in terms of how top schools rose and fell relative to one another—and in movement among schools outside of the top 15.
At quick glance, here are this year’s top 10, in order of their 2018 rank (2017 rank in parentheses):
1 Harvard Business School (1)
1 University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (4)
3 University of Chicago Booth School of Business (2, tie)
4 Stanford Graduate School of Business (2, tie)
4 MIT Sloan School of Management (5, tie)
4 Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (4, tie)
7 UC Berkeley Haas School of Business (7)
8 Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business (8, tie)
9 Yale School of Management (8, tie)
9 Columbia Business School (10)
With today’s release, students, alumni and administrators at Harvard Business School (HBS) can toast their school’s third consecutive showing at the top of the list. But the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School has even more cause for celebration, having tied HBS for first this year. It’s only the second time in 28 years it has claimed the No. 1 spot. It’s also an important rebound for the Philadelphia school, which fell to fourth last year as it was surpassed for the first time ever by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Chicago Booth isn’t letting up, though. It took third place this year after tying Stanford for No. 2 last year. After never having cracked the top three before, Booth’s now done it two years in a row.
Perhaps the biggest news among the top 10—and the farthest fall from grace—was Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB)’s slide into a three-way tie for fourth place with MIT Sloan School of Management and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Business. Stanford has never before not clocked in at least third or above in the U.S. News ranking.
Rounding out the top 10 were Haas, Tuck, Yale and Columbia—very similar to last year except that Yale slipped slightly, from a tie at eighth with Tuck to a tie this year at ninth with Columbia. It’s a slight gain for CBS, meanwhile, which last year was 10th, behind Tuck and Yale in a tie for eighth.
7 Key Takeaways from the 2018 U.S. News MBA Ranking
We’ve sifted through the data and compiled a summary of things worth taking notice of this year:
1) Wharton Is the Year’s Big Winner
Wharton has traditionally been considered part of the “holy trinity” of schools, behind only HBS and Stanford in many people’s eyes. That made last year’s fourth-place finish behind Chicago Booth a real blow.
This year, the school fought back—seizing a shared claim to first place for only its second time ever. Strong employment and pay figures—85.6 percent of graduates employed at graduation and the highest reported average salary of all schools, $155,058—helped significantly.
“This is excellent news for Wharton—especially after last year’s showing in the U.S. News ranking and, more broadly speaking, in light of the constant (and not always positive) media attention the school has garnered due to controversial alum, President Trump,” says Graham Richmond, Clear Admit’s co-founder. “While many will quip about employment figures and how they favor the likes of HBS and Wharton vs. Stanford, the key—from Wharton’s perspective—is being squarely back in the ‘trinity,’” adds Richmond.
Booth School of Business
2) Booth Stakes Its Claim in the Top Three
Last year, Chicago Booth tied Stanford for second place—its first time ever outranking Wharton and also the first time the Chicago school had secured a top-three spot in the history of the U.S. News rankings.
Making it into the top three for a second year in a row helps dispel any notions of last year being a fluke. A climbing GMAT average (726) and high employment numbers (84.9 percent employed at graduation) have played a part in its rise.
3) Methodology Disadvantages Stanford
Because U.S. News’ methodology relies on “grades” from corporate recruiters and other employment stats that favor larger firms over startups or entrepreneurial pursuits, schools with large numbers of students going into tech startups or entrepreneurship—such as Stanford—are essentially penalized. Stanford may be further hurt—at least in terms of the U.S. News list—by the fact that its graduates are confident enough that they’ll land a plum job that they can be a little choosier about which offers they accept. Indeed, only 62.8 percent of its MBAs were employed by graduation—as compared to 85.8 percent at Wharton, 84.9 percent at Chicago Booth and 79.3 percent at HBS.
Of course, Stanford came out ahead in terms of average GMAT/GRE scores (737), average undergraduate GPA (3.73) and overall student selectivity. With an acceptance rate of just 6 percent, it was by far the most selective school of all those ranked, with HBS accepting 10.6 percent, Wharton, 19.6 percent, and Chicago Booth, 23.6 percent. But these factors are given less weight than peer assessments and corporate recruiter survey scores as U.S. News crunches its data.
4) Yale SOM Defends Its Position in the Top 10
This year marks the third time since 2013 that Yale School of Management (SOM) has ranked in the top 10, giving the school an increasingly legitimate claim to membership in this elite club. In this most recent ranking, the New Haven school tied for No. 9 with CBS. Last year it tied at eighth with Tuck—a five-spot jump over the previous year.
Yale has been making improvements on several fronts. In 2011, the school hired Dean Edward Snyder—the very same dean who sat at the helm of Chicago Booth during its meteoric rankings rise in the early 2000s. Yale has also been poaching high-profile faculty from other schools over the last decade, including Andrew Metrick, professor of finance, and Anjani Jain, current assistant dean, both formerly Wharton faculty.
Add to that the opening of glittery new facilities in 2014 and the school’s traditional strength and reputation as a leader in the non-profit and corporate responsibility areas—currently in vogue with millennials—and the school’s continued top-10 showing makes sense.
5) Columbia Regains a Spot, Sort of
CBS is battling to maintain its top-10 claim, and its tie this year with Yale for ninth is theoretically an improvement over its 10th place finish last year. But it’s still down from the No. 8 spot it successfully defended from 2012 through 2016. Contributing factors could include the rising cost of living in New York and declining interest among applicants in the financial sector—but that’s just conjecture.
As we noted last year, CBS is one of only a few schools in the top 10 that haven’t recently unveiled a new building or substantially expanded their facilities, which could be a liability. Construction is underway for an impressive new Manhattanville campus, but its projected completion date has been pushed off from the original 2018.
Yale’s moving into—and remaining in—the top 10 has also exerted downward pressure on CBS.
6) NYU Stern Gets Its Scores in on Time, Bounces Back from 20 to 12
Last year’s biggest shock was NYU Stern’s plummet from No. 11 to No. 20. But as U.S. News noted at the time, the reason for Stern’s sharp decline was the fact that it didn’t get its GMAT/GRE scores in on time. When it did get the scores in, U.S. News refused to recalculate the rankings.
NYU Stern
The drop of nine spots on the list did seem harsh—and pretty implausible. Indeed, this year’s No. 12 showing seems much more legit for the traditionally top-15 school—suggesting it got its scores in on time this year.
Again, Clear Admit’s Graham Richmond weighs in: “Last year’s NYU Stern/U.S. News rankings fiasco did not paint U.S. News in the best of lights. It felt like a petty slap on the wrist aimed at Stern and served to raise questions about the validity of the rankings, which were arguably no longer accurate where a key school was concerned. While it is nice to see things seemingly back to ‘normal’ this year, the issue highlighted the perils of a straight ordinal ranking that some suspect can be tweaked to sell magazines, rather than a tiered ranking that represents the true matriculation behavior we see among applicants seeking an MBA.”
7) Movers and Shakers Elsewhere in the Ranking
Of course, there are many business schools beyond the top 10. U.S. News ranked 131 schools in total. Further down in the rankings you see some more precipitous gains and losses. On the plus side, Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business and USC’s Marshall School of Business both cracked the top 25. Carey jumped 10 places to 25th, from 35th last year. Marshall moved up seven spots to come in just ahead of Carey at 24th.
The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business slipped three spots to 14th, it’s second consecutive year of decline. Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management also took a hit, dropping from 22nd to tie with Carey at 25th. Falling out of the top 25 altogether was Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, which dropped to No. 29. This, despite its 11-spot leap to eighth place in Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s November 2016 ranking.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
What Women Want in an MBA: Financial Aid and Flexibility
In honor of last Wednesday’s International Women’s Day, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) today released a new report entitled “What Women Want: A Blueprint for Change in Business Education.” For readers who may be too young to remember the 2000 romantic comedy also called “What Women Want,” it starred Mel Gibson as a chauvinistic advertising executive who suffers a blow to the head that renders him suddenly able to hear everything women around him are thinking. Though first instinct would be to assume that the two—Gibson’s rom-com and GMAC’s research—have nothing at all to do with one another, that’s not entirely true.
Continue reading…
