Look Out for These Boston Internships
If you’ve read MetroMBA’s look at how summer internships play a crucial role for MBA students, you’re probably already familiar with the many benefits of interning during your MBA career. Between forging professional connections, gaining hands-on experience, and top tier salaries, MBA students have lot to gain from seeking out these opportunities. Boston internships manage to stand out, in particular, because of a wealth of excellent business school options.
Of course, the internship model is a win-win for all participants: students get the opportunity for professional experience, and companies get to work alongside emerging talent in the business world. Companies across the U.S. actively search for and recruit this talent. The need and capacity for interns, however, can vary from organization to organization. As students begin their search for the perfect internship, and can be important to take note of what companies are the biggest internship employers in their area.
Boston Internships for MBAs
Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), created ten years ago through the merger of Anheuser-Busch and InBev, is one of top hirers for MBA students in the Boston region. A Belgian-Brazilian beverage and brewing company, AB InBev has offices throughout the world, currently employing around 183,000 people. Given the global nature of their product, the company sponsors MBA and internship opportunities with a focus on global business. Each summer, the company offers a 10-12 week summer internship at their New York office, which often results in getting hired into the company’s Global MBA program—a one year high potential leadership program that prepares participants for quick career growth.
Anheuser-Busch InBev was one of the top hirers for MBA internships at both the Harvard Business School and the Sloan School of Management at MIT, two of the most highly ranked business programs in the world. At MIT Sloan, AB InBev employed nine members of the Class of 2017 as summer interns.
Founded 173 years ago in London, Deloitte remains one of the world’s top professional services networks today, providing tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services throughout the world. As of 2016, Deloitte was recognized as the 6th largest privately owned organization in the United States.
With roughly 263,900 employees worldwide, it’s probably no surprise that Deloitte offers plenty of Boston internships. Deloitte Consulting hired six MBA interns from MIT Sloan for the summer of 2017, and also made the lists of top employers for F.W. Olin, Harvard, and Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School.
The vast number of student interns employed at Deloitte may be a reflection of their vast internship program, which include programs like the Deloitte Consulting Immersion Program, Deloitte Women’s Leadership Launch, and the Advanced Degree Veterans’ Forum.
At Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, 108 different companies hired 140 students for internships in 2018. CVS Health, also an employer for MBAs from Harvard Business School and Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, hired five students from Questrom for summer internships, making it the number one employer for that school.
CVS Health Corporation, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, has grown since 1964 into a top Fortune 500 company with more than 246,000 employees and $177 billion in annual revenue. In December 2017, the retail and health care company also made headlines when it acquired health insurance mega-company Aetna for $69 billion.
CVS Health offers a number of MBA internship programs for MBA students, depending on their interest within the field. Among them are the CVS Year-round internship, Spanish Immersion Summer Internship, and Specialty Clinical Innovation Internship. CVS also believes in students growing their careers with the organization, which likely means greater opportunity for an internship to turn into a long term career.
With the growing popularity of jobs within the healthcare administration field, it should come as no surprise that one of the top employers for MBA internships in Boston is the Boston Children’s Hospital. The hospital, founded in 1869, has been ranked by the U.S. News & World Report #1 in eight of ten clinical specialties. For 2018-19, it was named the country’s number one pediatric hospital.
The hospital is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, so it’s likely no surprise that they are a top employer of MBA students as well, learning about the other side of health care. They are also one of the top employers for MBA students at Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business, which requires students to pursue a corporate residency for six months of its 24-month full-time MBA program.
MBAs Hold High Expectations for B-School Admissions Process, Survey Finds
According to the 2018 MBA Applicant Survey conducted by the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC), MBA applicants expect a lot from business schools as they make their way through the admissions process. Not only do they want the schools themselves to be more transparent—including providing status updates, feedback, and earlier wait list decisions—they also want more consultant advice and interaction.
“More transparency in terms of the status of the application will be appreciated,” wrote one survey respondent. “Leading schools like [schools] were notoriously quiet about the application for more than 5 weeks.”
Even applicants whose bids for admission were unsuccessful want more from schools. “Feedback at some point would be fantastic,” wrote one. “At least some indication of what portion of an application was below expectation would be helpful even just for personal development.”
The latest annual AIGAC survey drew almost 2,000 responses from applicants to more than two dozen leading business schools. Results were released as part of the admissions consultant group’s annual conference, which took place last week at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Where Do MBA Applicants Look for Admissions Information?
According to the survey results, school websites are a primary source of information for 80 percent of applicants. After school websites, online information sessions, student and alumni referrals, and admissions teams are where applicants are most likely to turn. In terms of what they are looking for, applicants are most eager for information that helps them set expectations for the admissions process, but finding it isn’t always easy. As one survey respondent said, “[School]’s application process was steeped in mystery.”
Outside of school resources, students look to social media, online communities/forums, MBA rankings, and then family/friends/work colleagues. They also look to the blogs and websites of admissions consultants as well as printed viewbooks and brochures. And many applicants look in as many places as possible to find the information they crave.
“Videos, interviews, and current or alumni experiences are very valuable,” wrote one survey respondent. Another underscored the importance of school websites being “very easy to navigate.” Online seminars that only reiterate information available on the schools’ websites are less valuable, shared another.
In the social media sphere, more applicants look to LinkedIn for information than any other channel, followed by YouTube and Facebook. Quora follows, trailed by Instagram and Twitter.
Schools That Get to Know MBA Applicants Best
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, UVA’s Darden School of Business, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School scored the highest marks in terms of how well they get to know applicants as part of the admissions process. Notably, some of the most highly ranked business schools fell short in this regard, with Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School bringing up the rear. As one candidate explained, “Though I fell in love with [school] during my campus visit, I felt that their application process was very impersonal, and I didn’t feel like I had enough of an opportunity to show the school who I was with a video and a [short essay] …”
Why the MBA? Why a Particular School?
The survey also sought to understand what most motivates applicants to apply to MBA programs in general. More than half—57 percent—seek to acquire new information, skills, and knowledge. Forty-nine percent, meanwhile, want access to job prospects. And 48 percent are seeking a stronger network or to advance their careers.
As for the top factors influencing which schools applicants choose to target, reputation reigns supreme, cited by 66 percent of applicants surveyed. School rank was a top factor for 61 percent, and school culture, for 53 percent.
To learn more about the survey results and to read more personal responses from applicants, consult the full survey here.
This article was edited and published with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
What are the Best MBA Programs by Specialty?
Each year, U.S. News and World Report looks at the top business schools around the country to decide which offer the best MBA programs. The goal is to help MBA candidates most effectively choose the best MBA degree to help them achieve their goals based on their interests and strengths. The problem is that there are hundreds of programs and it can be difficult to weed out all the noise to get to the information that you want most.
That’s why the U.S. News and World Report decided to break down all of their findings into a more easily consumable ranking. They outlined the top MBA programs by discipline to help you quickly and easily find the school you’re looking for. Each of the schools on the list was chosen based on alumni interviews, schools statistics, research data, and more.
We’ve broken down the results below along with crucial information about each school listed and where you can learn more information.
MIT’s Unique Team Building Tool, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: Music Making as an Effective Teaming Tool – MIT Sloan Newsroom
The MIT Sloan School of Management recently hosted an Innovation Period workshop entitled “Music Making as Effective Teaming Tool,” which focused on leadership training through music. The workshop was developed in conjunction with New York nonprofit Found Sound Nation, which uses “collaborative sound-making as a tool to help enhance communities and build bonds.”
MIT Leadership Center Associate Director Abby Berenson explains, “Through music-making, they create a sense of community and a sense of teams, and through teams, this leadership practice. That’s really at the heart of what we try to bring for any of the SIP workshops we do.”
Sloan MBA student Faye Cheng added, “Being able to experience failure in a low-risk setting gave [me] new insight into how it can open up new avenues for creativity and innovation. It didn’t have to be a perfect sound, it was just ‘Let’s try things out and layer them on.’ In real life, it can be more daunting to fail in that way or make a decision and have to undo it later.”
You can read the full article here and listen to the students’ songs below.
How Companies Can Identify Racial and Gender Bias in Their Customer Service – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business Review recently published an article by HBS Organizational Behavior Ph.D. candidate Alexandra C. Feldberg and UVA Darden assistant professor of marketing Tami Kim in which they explore the prevalence of racial and gender bias within customer service.
As part of their ongoing research, Feldberg and Kim “audited 6,000 hotels in the U.S. by sending email inquiries from fictitious email accounts that signaled senders’ race and gender. By systematically examining replies to these inquiries, we observed that frontline employees were less responsive to nonwhite customers and objectively less helpful and friendly. In other words, compared to white customers, black and Asian customers received worse quality service.”
They offered four effective strategies that large companies can implement to combat racial and gender bias:
- “Develop anticipatory service protocols.” In other words: “standardize scripts and develop rules.”
- “Develop channels for employee feedback” to accommodate any new customer service issues.
- “Emphasize not just “best” service,” which the researchers argue can be “onerous and subject to interpretation,” but “equal” service.
- “Diversify employees’ experiences … through hiring and employee rotations.”
You can read the full article here.
Real World Statistics with Professor Ed Vieira – Simmons Blog
The Simmons School of Management blog recently re-published an interview with associate professor Edward T. Viera, Jr., whose 2017 textbook on applied statistics raised a number of interesting questions related to how big data and statistics can be utilized in the health care industry, for instance.
Professor Viera explains, “Statistics allows us to analyze complex problems and provide reliable results, which humans cannot as easily do. Statistics offers the tools to “objectively” analyze a situation so that we can make reliable, data-driven, informed decision … with unprecedented precision.”
He adds, “Through the use of health care analytics, which deploys advanced software and hardware technologies, we can monitor and adjust our research or treatment based on the collection of data in real time.”
Check out the complete interview with Professor Viera here.
Women Leaders Headline 2018 MBA Commencement Addresses
With spring fully in sway, classes have come to an end on many leading business school campuses, and commencement activities fill weekend after weekend from now through June. The roster of speakers top schools invite to send their MBA graduates off into the world can be revealing.
Graduation speakers are typically invited to impart hard-earned wisdom and present words of encouragement to MBA classes, and this year is no exception in that regard. More exceptional, though, is the number of women delivering the headlining speeches.
Sallie Krawcheck, CEO and Co-Founder of Ellevest at NYU Stern
NYU’s Stern School of Business selected Sallie Krawcheck to headline its 2018 Graduate Convocation ceremony on Friday May 18.
Krawcheck is currently CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, an investment firm designed for women, which “aims to serve women [investors’] needs…using an algorithm tailored specifically to women’s incomes and life cycles.”
Sallie Krawcheck / Photo Ellevest
The company has racked up a slew of accolades, among them inclusion in both Nerdwallet’s “Best Robo Advisors of 2018” and Entrepreneur Magazine’s “100 Brilliant Ideas of 2017.”
In a preview of her speech, Krawcheck spoke about our “tumultuous and confusing times,” challenging individuals to evaluate their own personal “ideas of ethical leadership and who we really are,” as well as the ways in which we consider our careers as they relate to our responsibility to the world around us.
“We have to decide if we’re going to be that person who does the right thing. We have to decide if we’re going to commit to equality, to diversity, and to using the power of business to make the world a better place.”
Vice Chairwoman of Morgan Stanley Carla Harris at Harvard Business School
On May 23, Harvard Business School welcomed Morgan Stanley Vice Chairwoman Carla Harris, whose distinguished career spans three decades.
Carla Harris / Photo via Fast Comapny
Harris has been named to Fortune’s list of the “50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America” and its “Most Influential List” and appeared in similar lists in wide-ranging publications including U.S. Banker, Black Enterprise, Essence Magazine, and Ebony.
Harris has also received honorary doctorates from seven different institutions including Marymount Manhattan College, Jacksonville University, and Simmons College.
Instagram COO Marne Levine at Michigan Ross
One of the first commencement addresses of the season took place on Friday, April 27, at Michigan’s Ross School of Business, where Instagram’s Chief Operating Officer Marne Levine delivered a rousing headlining speech.
Ross Dean Scott DeRue introduced Levine with remarks about her inspirational career and commitment to her work’s impact on society. DeRue added that he sought to invite someone “who role models the leadership we aspire to.” He also praised Levine’s “transformative and positive impact on how we live, work, and interact with each other.”
Marne Levine / Photo via Collective Hub
With more than 700 million users worldwide, Instagram has become an iconic brand due in no small part to Levine’s efforts to scale the company’s business and operations at a global level.
She has been COO at Instagram since 2014 and before that served as VP of global public policy with parent company Facebook. Levine’s roots, however, are in the political arena: She worked in the Obama administration as chief of staff of the National Economic Council, worked under Harvard President Larry Summers, and began her career in the Department of the Treasury during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
You can watch Levine’s speech below.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
Hot MBA Jobs: Venture Capital Associate
If you’ve ever used an app like Uber or Snapchat, odds are you’ve benefited from the work of a venture capital associate. Through skills like financial modeling, evaluations, and a little bit of luck, venture capital associates find ‘the next big thing’ and provide the money to make it happen. And though not all of these skills can be taught, top venture capital firms are looking to business programs to find the perfect candidate.
For students looking to join the venture capital industry, the path isn’t always an easy one. The level of experience required in the field means that very few students find venture capital associate positions straight out of their MBA programs. This doesn’t seem to deter those who are ready to work for it, however. Last year, private equity was ranked as the second-biggest employer for MBA graduates at the Harvard Business School.
Before you get started on the road to becoming a venture capital associate, let’s take a look at what the path to your dream job might look like.
The Venture Capitalist Job Role
Venture capital (VC) firms take on the risky but often lucrative job of searching the startup world for the next big thing. In exchange for providing capital infusions to startup companies in the early stages of their business, venture capitalists receive both oversight and ownership in the company.
For associates at venture capital firms, the job primarily involves sourcing new deals—setting up meetings with entrepreneurs and companies to find prospective investments—and supporting existing ones. As most roles in financial analysis go, VC associates are responsible for supporting all aspects of an investment, from the initial sourcing, modeling, and execution of a deal.
The exact type of work done by a VC associate may be determined by the type of for it is. For firms more focused on funding startups in their early stages, the associates work may be more concentrated on sourcing, while firms working more on late-stage financing will likely require more diligence and modeling from its associates.
Venture Capitalist Salary
While the exact roles of a venture capital associate may vary widely with the firm and its specialization, the general trend shows VC work to be an incredibly lucrative career. In 2016, graduates from top MBA programs like Stanford GSB and Harvard Business School joined VC firms at an average salary of $175,000.
According to Payscale, the average salary across all education levels for an associate at a venture capital firm is $92,067. The level of experience can make a big difference when it comes to the venture capital associate role, as well. Mid-career professionals in this role make on average 24 percent more than the national average, and experienced professionals up to 51 percent more.
Where Do Venture Capital Associates Work?
Venture capital firms can be found throughout the world in a variety of fields, leaving a wide range of opportunities open to up and coming VC associates. Certainly, studying and working near concentrated start up hubs like the Silicon Valley in California or the UK’s Silicon Fen can help boost an MBAs ability to get their foot in the door.
Still, a quick look at open venture capital associate positions open at the time of writing reveal diverse offerings spread throughout the country, from Palo Alto, CA to Philadelphia, PA to Durham, NC. MBAs looking to pursue a role in venture capitalism may also look for roles that allow them to pursue other areas of business they are passionate about, since VC firms are typically specialized in the type of startup they will invest in, be it fintech, health science, and other various fields.
Some of the world’s top corporations also have venture capital firms that will invest in companies related to their work. This includes companies like Google, Intel, Salesforce, Johnson & Johnson, and more.
The Venture Capital Associate Education
VC firms looking for associates are likely looking for MBAs who have had some previous experience on the workforce. While it’s not impossible for those without MBA degrees to begin as associates, opportunities for advancement to a partner level role are typically unusual without one. Typically, pre-MBA associates are expected to only work two to three years at a firm and then move on.
For post-MBA associates, it’s expected that these individuals will be working towards a partner level position. Firms will be looking for candidates with strong records in analysis who can demonstrate a deep understanding of markets and industries. Given that even MBA graduates will be expected to have a certain level of experience before joining a VC firm, these roles can be incredibly competitive. On-campus recruiting is uncommon for these firms, and typically only graduates from top level MBA programs are recruited to these positions. Basically, if you are determined to enter the venture capital industry, you will not only need an MBA education- you will need to prove you have the best MBA education.
The Top VC MBA Programs
To join the incredibly competitive field of Venture Capitalism, MBA graduates need a demonstrated record of financial analysis skills and a degree with the reputation to back it up. Some of the top schools for those looking to enter the VC or private equity fields overlap with some of the highest ranked MBA programs in the world. Schools that have strong relationships with investment banks and those with strong finance programs will likely offer the most opportunities for students looking for careers as VC associates. Some of the top schools for the field are listed below:
- Booth School of Business – University of Chicago: The full-time MBA program at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business has a strong focus on venture capital and private equity through the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship. The program provides strong networking opportunities for their MBAs through student organizations like the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (EVP) Group. The group offers career development, networking, activities, and speakers covering the most important topics in venture capital today.
- Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University: MBA students at the Kellogg School of Management will find a huge focus on venture capitalism through the school’s Heizer Center for Private Equity and Venture Capital. Part of the center is the school’s Venture Lab, an experiential learning course that allows students hands-on experience with a quarter-long internship at venture funds, incubators or start-ups.
- Harvard Business School: The top-ranked Harvard Business School has one of the highest success rates in the world for students interested in venture capitalism. In 2015, roughly 14 percent of HBS graduates went into positions at private equity or venture capital firms. Organizations like the Venture Capital & Private Equity Club– which provides a speaker series, career treks, and an annual conference—allows students to get acquainted with the industry long before graduation.
