Admissions Tip: The Waitlist
Last week was marked by Round 1 decision releases from a couple of the schools covered on MetroMBA and Clear Admit, and in the coming weeks, many of the remaining schools are scheduled to release R1 decisions. Clear Admit’s MBA LiveWire has captured a lot of this news, including quite a few candidates recently reporting that they’ve been waitlisted at places like London Business School and INSEAD.
For better or for worse, waitlisting is rather popular with top schools in the first round of admissions. As such, we’re devoting this week’s admissions tip to guidance for candidates who find themselves placed on a waitlist. Before we get to that, let’s look first at why schools use a waitlist.
Why Schools Use the Waitlist
First and foremost, while schools now know the quality of their Round 1 pool, they don’t yet know how strong the remainder of their applicants for this admissions season will prove, nor can they predict how many of the candidates admitted as part of Round 1 will ultimately enroll. Simply put, the waitlist helps schools manage these unknowns to arrive at the strongest possible class come fall. Some schools will “under admit” Round 1 candidates in case there is a flood of quality applicants in Round 2 or a higher yield of Round 1 candidates than predicted. The goal of the school is, after all, to admit the best overall class, regardless of when someone applies. They also do not want to over admit during an early round, which will limit their opportunities to admit strong candidates later, thus the push to “under admit,” and place significant quantities of candidates on the waitlist who may very well gain admission in later rounds. Chicago Booth explains this well on their web-site:
“The waitlist at Chicago Booth is used to gauge the pool of candidates in a subsequent round before offering a final decision to those candidates placed on the waitlist.”
Schools also can learn, by placing a candidate on the waitlist, how committed he or she is to attending the school. There is signal value in how a candidate responds to the waitlist decision. Some candidates placed on a waitlist receive offers at other schools they would prefer to attend, in which case they will opt out. Others remain convinced that the school that has waitlisted them is their best choice and will hold out to see if they can ultimately gain admission.
As well, if you are waitlisted, we’ve outlined some more advice we feel will help you on the way to earning an MBA.
Five Tips for Making the Best of the Waitlist
If you find yourself on the waitlist, don’t lose hope. Top programs admit a fair number of individuals from the waitlist in Round 2 and even later. That said, we know that cautious optimism does not make the wait for an answer any easier. To help those in this situation make sure that they’re doing all they can, we do have a few strategic waitlist tips:
Know—and follow—the rules.
Schools vary in their stances when it comes to interaction with those on the waitlist; some shun communication from applicants and even go so far as to discourage on-the-record campus visits, whereas others welcome correspondence and assign an admissions office liaison to serve the needs of waitlisted candidates.
We know that the natural impulse is to update the adcom that recent promotion or the final grade from that accounting class you took to bolster your academic profile. At first blush, a short letter or quick call to communicate this kind of update might seem harmless. But no matter how exciting the piece of news you want to share may be, ignoring the adcom’s instructions is ultimately going to reflect badly on you. Though policies discouraging communication from waitlisted candidates may seem frustrating or unfair, it’s important to respect and abide by the preferences of each school.
Communicate if you can.
For those programs that do permit or encourage contact from waitlisters—Booth, for example, has traditionally invited waitlisted candidates to submit an additional 300-word essay—it is important to provide an update. In addition to the obvious news items mentioned above, it’s beneficial to read over your essays and reflect on whether there is some piece of your background or interests that you haven’t gotten across yet. Taking the time to write about your relevant recent experiences, positive developments in your candidacy and ways that you’ve enhanced your understanding of the program is a nice sign of your interest in the school and a good strategy for telegraphing your commitment to attending. It is, of course, also in your interest to make sure that the adcom has the most up-to-date information so that it can make an informed decision the next time your file comes up for evaluation.
Keep in touch.
Don’t disappear after an initial note to the adcom or phone call to your waitlist manager (if applicable). If you have plans to be on or near campus, for instance, send a quick email to alert your waitlist manager (or whoever you may have interacted with on the adcom) to this fact. In many cases, you’ll find that the adcom will even invite you to stop by for a friendly chat about your candidacy—something that can go a long way towards helping your case. Beyond a visit, sending a brief update every few weeks or so is another way to reaffirm your interest in the school and keep you fresh in the minds of the adcom—something that could work to your advantage in a discussion of which candidates to admit from the waitlist. In all cases, it is important to remember that there is a fine line between persistence and pestering, so use good judgment!
Letters of support.
If, during the admissions process, you have interacted with students or alumni of the program, it may be worth reaching back out to these individuals and updating them on your status. Assuming you have made a positive impression during the admissions cycle, they may be willing to provide an additional letter of support for your candidacy at this stage of the process.
Have a contingency plan.
While it’s important to be consistent and enthusiastic when waitlisted and communicate with staff at your target program, it’s also wise to have a backup plan. With the Round 2 deadlines for several top programs a little over a month away, there’s still time to put together a solid application to another school. Even if you’re waitlisted at the school of your dreams and intend to reapply if not admitted, it’s also never too early to start thinking about the coming year and what steps you might take to enhance your candidacy before next fall.
Good luck to everyone waiting to receive decisions over the next few weeks!
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
Rotman MBAs Take Home Top Prizes in International Business Competitions
From Chicago to Amsterdam, MBA students from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto have been taking top prizes at recent international business competitions.
Columbia Business Prof Co-Authors Study of How Pop Songs Become Hits
Building a quality song doesn’t exactly mean it will become a hit single, but there are ways to predict how it’s possible. Columbia Business School looked further into the hit-making algorithm songwriters can take note of, but it is hardly a guarantee it will work.
In a new American Sociological Review paper entitled “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music,” co-authors Michael Mauskapf, a CBS Assistant Professor of Management, and Noah Askin, an INSEAD Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, found that all top-charting anthems share one attribute: they balance familiarity and novelty. In other words: songs have to be bold, but not too bold and predictable, but not too predictable, lest they totally alienate or bore listeners to tears.
The duo used music intelligence platform The Echo Nest to analyze the key, mode, and tempo of over 26,000 songs. According to Askin, “The songs that reach the highest echelons of the charts bear some similarity to other popular songs that are out at the same time, but they must be unique in certain ways in order to differentiate themselves.” Mauskapf adds, “We found that songs with a somewhat below average typicality score tended do better on the Hot 100.”
They also accounted for non-musical factors, such as previous chart success, the cachet of an artist’s team, a particular artist’s “star factor,” and marketing budget. While these elements are certainly important, the researchers seem to agree that “hit song science” is ineffectual at best.
Mauskapf explains, “It’s very difficult to predict what kinds of songs other musicians will release, and when audiences will find them to be “optimally distinct.” Askin adds, “What becomes popular next is likely to be slightly differentiated from the last round of hits, leading to a constant evolution of what is popular. Popularity is a moving target, but the context always remains relevant. This is at least as much art as it is science.”
Choosing the Best Business School for Consulting
If you are a prospective MBA applicant looking to business school as a way to enter or accelerate your career in the consulting industry, you are certainly not alone. According to the 2017 Prospective Student Survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), consulting is once again the most sought-after postgraduate industry, with 33 percent of applicants surveyed citing consulting firms as their destination of choice. The consulting function, too, is a top draw. One in four indicated it as their chosen job function, after just marketing/sales (30 percent) and finance/accounting (28 percent).
With so many MBA graduates vying for roles in the consulting field, one of the best ways to distinguish yourself is by going to one of the business schools best known for training top-notch consultants. Of course, this requires thorough research and a deep knowledge of individual school programs. Lucky for you, Clear Admit has done some of the legwork.
Consulting Continues to Be a Top Draw for MBAs
Finance—and investment banking in particular—took a hit following the financial crash of 2008. And the tech sector has been gaining ground as a top destination for MBA grads. But along the way, the consulting industry has held its own, with MBAs clamoring to work for both towering giants in the field as well as at an increasing number of boutique firms now in the marketplace.
What’s the allure? Part of it is the diverse work. Consultants get to think creatively and solve problems, analyze both the big picture and the details, and work on teams juggling multiple assignments. Top salaries don’t hurt either. Recent MBA graduates taking jobs at firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company—known as ‘the MBB firms’ in industry parlance—reported base salaries in 2017 of between $147,000 to $152,500, with additional signing bonuses of $25,000, according to managementconsulted.com, an online resource for the consulting industry.
Choosing the Best Business School for Consulting
Determining which leading business school will best prepare you for a career in consulting requires looking at a range of factors. A logical place to start is by examining career outcomes at individual schools, both in terms of summer internships and full-time jobs. If possible with the available data, you also want to get a sense of how well a school has done placing career-switchers, namely those without prior consulting experience, in coveted consulting roles, since barriers for entry for these grads are understandably higher than for their counterparts who have already worked in the field.
It can also be instructive to see which of the powerhouse consulting firms donate to which leading business schools. Finally, it helps to understand how a given school goes about teaching its students to be consultants, what role experiential learning plays, whether you can hope to learn directly from superstar professors in the field, and what extracurricular resources are in place to help you land your dream consulting gig.
Consulting at UVA Darden
The University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business sent more of its MBA graduates into consulting than any other U.S. school, with 38 percent of the Class of 2016 pursuing work in the consulting industry and 38 percent choosing a consulting function. By comparison, Harvard Business School (HBS) sent 25 percent of its 2016 graduates into consulting, and Stanford Graduate School of Business sent just 16 percent.
As for the top recruiting companies at Darden, Boston Consulting Group snapped up 18 members of the Class of 2016, followed by McKinsey & Company (14), PwC (13), and Accenture (10).
In terms of pay, the average base salary for a Darden MBA heading into consulting was $135,771 with a signing bonus of $26,927. While this isn’t the highest salary in the industry—it falls a few thousand dollars short of offers reported by students at schools like Kellogg School of Management—it is the highest average salary for all Darden MBAs.
Darden’s Classroom, Curriculum, and Professors
As for how Darden trains its MBAs to enter a career in consulting, the school offers a career track concentration in strategy consulting. This concentration is designed to immerse MBA students into the consulting process by helping them identify and deepen their consulting skill sets.
Darden is also known for its case study method of teaching and learning. This method confronts Darden MBA students with challenging, real-life business situations and teaches them how to analyze each situation to come up with a solution—just as they will be called upon to do in a consulting career. Over the course of MBA students’ two years at Darden, they’ll complete in more than 500 case studies on a variety of topics, industries, and diverse environments.
As for Darden’s faculty, many of the school’s professors have an in-depth knowledge of consulting with a breadth of research dedicated to all facets of the field. For example, Samuel E. Bodily, a professor of business administration, teaches “Decision Analysis” to first-year students and “Management Decision Models” to second-year students while also consulting with many corporations, utilities, and government agencies. And Scott. C. Beardsley, Darden dean since 2015, spent 26 years at McKinsey & Company before joining the school.
Outside the Classroom
Darden is home to the Consulting Club, a student organization designed to support students interested in the consulting industry. The club regularly holds events such as consulting industry panels, networking 101, consulting conferences, case competitions, mock interview sessions, internship preparation workshops, and more. And many large consulting companies are club sponsors, including Deloitte, AT Kearney, Bain & Company, EY, and Accenture.
In addition, there are also a variety of consulting projects for MBAs to participate in. These projects help MBAs learn how to develop business plans, create financial forecasts, and perform marketing analysis. For each project, teams of three to six students will work with corporations, global businesses, or non-profit organizations to provide strategy evaluation and planning services.
INSEAD For Consulting
In terms of sheer numbers, no school sends more students into consulting jobs than INSEAD. According to the school’s latest 2016 MBA employment report, 46 percent of INSEAD MBAs took a job in the consulting sector and 48 percent assumed a consulting function. That’s a whopping 479 students accepting a position as a consultant—almost half of the 999 students who filled out the employment report.
INSEAD’s MBA graduates took jobs with such companies as McKinsey (which hired 125 INSEAD grads in 2016), BCG (67), Bain (48), Strategy& (24), and Accenture (16). And it’s no wonder the major players like INSEAD. Many alumni hold prominent positions such as chairmen, CEO, or senior leader at these same top consulting firms.
As for where these consulting grads work, they’re spread out around the world. More than 100 consulting graduates took jobs in Western Europe, 41 of those in the United Kingdom. Another 83 graduates headed off to consulting offices in Asia Pacific, including 23 each in Singapore and Australia. But the single most attractive country for INSEAD consulting grads was the United Arab Emirates, which drew 42.
INSEAD also features an alliance with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, allowing INSEAD students to spend one of their five periods studying at the U.S. school. INSEAD has a similar campus exchange with Kellogg as well. These exchanges afford INSEAD students access to those schools’ career management centers as well, which can be especially valuable in terms of making connections to U.S. recruiters for students who are interested in working in consulting in the United States after graduation.
In terms of what its consulting grads command in salary, INSEAD also shows strong numbers, albeit lower than Kellogg and Darden. For 2016, the overall mean salary in consulting was $107,300 USD, the overall median salary was $109,500 USD, and the overall annual median sign-on bonus was $25,000, with 76 percent of salaries coming with a sign-on bonus and 83 percent with a performance bonus around $24,500.
Proud of its success in helping career switchers enter new industries, INSEAD shares data about how many of its graduates heading into consulting started out there and how many used business school to make a pivot. Of those graduates taking jobs in consulting after INSEAD, 67 percent held pre-MBA roles in consulting. But 34 percent of those who were financial services professionals also successfully switched to consulting, as did 56 percent of former technology, media, and telecommunications professionals and 38 percent of former corporate sector professionals.
How Consulting Is Taught at INSEAD
INSEAD’s accelerated 10-month MBA is composed of five, eight-week periods built around core courses and electives and concluding with an exam, essay, and/or project. There is no preferred teaching method at INSEAD; instead, individual professors choose the method they feel is best. However, no matter the teaching style or technique, each class is sure to have lively exchange opportunities and diverse study groups.
In terms of core courses, students will start out their first eight weeks with an “Introduction to Strategy” course and will continue their learning into the next period with “Process & Operations Management.” As for electives, over a dozen courses are offered under the Strategy heading including the “Strategy Lab,” which provides MBA students with a practitioner’s view of how consultants tackle projects.
Who Trains Consultants at INSEAD
There are more than 25 resident strategy professors across INSEAD’s three campuses, as well as around a dozen visiting faculty members. Of these, several are former consultants, bringing experience straight from the trenches at McKinsey, Monitor Group, and Accenture, among other leading firms.
Two INSEAD professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, authored a best-selling book called Blue Ocean Strategy, which spawned the 2007 launch of the INSEAD Blue Ocean Strategy Institute. The institute offers several programs and electives that support the development of aspiring consultants, including a mini-elective, “Blue Ocean Strategy Simulation,” that lets students apply the trademark Blue Ocean Strategy toward managing a fictional company.
Beyond the Classroom at INSEAD
INSEAD’s accelerated 10-month program can make it hard for some student groups to gel, but despite this obstacle, the INSEAD Consulting Club seems to have an active campus presence. Much like at Darden, the Consulting Club at INSEAD provides resources to help INSEAD students prepare for consulting interviews and careers, including workshops, networking, and recruiting events with consulting firms. It also publishes the INSEAD Consulting Club Handbook, free to Consulting Club members, which offers an overview of the industry, profiles of individual firms, and sample cover letters, résumés, interview tips, and practice case questions.
INSEAD also features regular consulting case competitions, including the A.T. Kearney Global Prize Competition. As many as 15 teams from INSEAD compete against each other, with winners advancing to represent INSEAD in a regional competition against seven other European business schools. The winning European school then battles the winning North American school for the Global Prize.
Top MBA Programs for Producing Founders: 2017-2018 Report
Recently, PitchBook released its latest 2017-2018 Top 50 Universities Report. The ranking focused on those universities that produced the “ultimate building blocks of the venture industry: founders.”
This ranking is vastly different from rankings of top schools for entrepreneurship by U.S. News & World Report, Princeton Review, and Entrepreneur Magazine, all of which focus on factors like peer assessment surveys, curriculum, and entrepreneurial study options. Instead, PitchBook looked at a single criterion: founders of companies who received venture capital (VC) funding between January 1, 2006, and August 18, 2017, and where they went to school.
The report provides a fairly detailed breakdown of top undergraduate programs, companies (by capital raised), MBA programs, female founders, unicorns (companies that have attained the coveted $1 billion evaluation), and more. This article will focus solely on the results that relate to MBA programs, including information on female founders and unicorns.
Top MBA Programs
For the 2017-18 academic year, the top 10 MBA programs to produce founders who received VC funding were ranked as follows:
- Harvard Business School (HBS): 1,203 entrepreneurs, 1,086 companies, and $28,495 million raised
- Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB): 802 entrepreneurs, 716 companies, and $18,259 million raised
- University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School: 666 entrepreneurs, 585 companies, and $16,001 million raised
- INSEAD: 455 entrepreneurs, 406 companies, and $7,795 million raised
- Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management: 445 entrepreneurs, 417 companies, and $5,680 million raised
- Columbia Business School: 441 entrepreneurs, 410 companies, and $5,465 million raised
- MIT Sloan School of Management: 437 entrepreneurs, 384 companies, and $7,797 million raised
- University of Chicago Booth School of Business: 405 entrepreneurs, 368 companies, and $5,470 million raised
- University of California – Berkeley Haas School of Business: 344 entrepreneurs, 314 companies, and $5,191 million raised
- UCLA Anderson School of Management: 247 entrepreneurs, 232 companies, and $3,957 million raised
HBS stands out immediately for producing founders who receive VC funding. Harvard produced twice as many founders as its next closest competitor, and those founders pulled in $10M more in funding for their 1,000+ companies.
As for the reason behind Harvard’s success, there are multiple elements that contribute to its production of entrepreneurs. The school is home to the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, which offers programs for budding entrepreneurs including curricular offerings (over a dozen courses), a New Venture Competition (which offers $300,000 in cash prizes), the Rock Accelerator, the Harvard Innovation Lab, and even a Loan Reduction program that supports graduating entrepreneurs with a one-time, need-based award of $10,000 to $20,000. HBS’s extensive alumni network also provides students with connections with managing directors, partners, and founders of top VC firms including Bain Capital Ventures, Apax Partners, and Accel Partners.
Another standout for the 2017-2018 year was INSEAD. The only non-U.S. MBA program to appear in the top 10, it also moved up a spot this year over last. INSEAD grew from 393 entrepreneurs, 348 companies, and $6,131 million in capital raised to 455, 406, and $7,794 million respectively.
INSEAD’s students are supported by the INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship (ICE), which was founded in 2003. The center offers MBA students a chance to participate in the INSEAD Venture Competition (IVC), Entrepreneurship Bootcamps, and the Entrepreneurship Teaching Innovation (ETI) Fund, which supports the development of the “Your First Hundred Days” elective for budding entrepreneurs.
Another MBA program of note is MIT Sloan School of Management, which was fourth in capital raised on this year’s PitchBook ranking. This could indicate more successful companies coming out of MIT or a higher percentage of VC funding available to Massachusetts’ graduates.
Some of the unique entrepreneurship opportunities available from other top programs include Stanford GSB’s Startup Garage, an intensive, hands-on project course for MBA students, as well as MIT Sloan’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, which includes an accelerator, coaching, and various events. Finally, the Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship Center offers resources, events, and courses for MBAs looking to explore, develop, launch, and scale a startup.
Top Female Founders & Unicorns
PitchBook also reviewed the top MBA programs for female founders. Once again, HBS and Stanford GSB ranked first and second, respectively, with 202 and 119 female founders. Columbia Business School ranked third with 77, Wharton ranked fourth with 71, and MIT came in at fifth with 60 female founders.
As for the unicorns, the top five MBA programs are similar to the previous lists.
- HBS: 22 entrepreneurs, 17 companies
- Stanford GSB: 14 entrepreneurs, 11 companies
- Wharton: 11 entrepreneurs, 8 companies
- INSEAD: 8 entrepreneurs, 7 companies
- MIT Sloan: 6 entrepreneurs, 6 companies
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
A Recommendation Revolution Is Underway in MBA Admissions: What You Need to Know
I’m busy, you’re busy, your boss is most definitely busy. Indeed, publications ranging from Men’s Health to the Atlantic, the Washington Post to Forbes are all reporting that “busyness“ has become the new status symbol for our times. Which is part of what makes asking someone to write you a letter of recommendation for business school so daunting. Now, try telling that person that you actually need five different letters for five different schools. Oy vey.
As uncomfortable a spot as it puts applicants in—it’s no better for recommenders. Even your most vociferous supporter is going to wonder what in the world she’s gotten herself into when she realizes that helping you in your pursuit of acceptance to business school means taking time away from work or play or family or whatever else to labor over leadership assessment grids, each a little different from the one before, and write 10 slightly different answers to 10 slightly different questions. Here’s hoping that your top-choice school doesn’t happen to be the last one she gets around to…
Good news. The graduate management education industry recognizes the strain that letters of recommendation put on applicants and recommenders alike and has been wrestling with ways to make the process easier for everyone involved. To this end, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) established a committee made up of admissions representatives from dozens of leading business schools to brainstorm about ways to lessen the burden while still collecting the third-party assessments of candidates that are so critical to the MBA application process.
GMAC Pilots Common MBA Letter of Recommendation
As an outgrowth of that committee’s work, GMAC last year piloted a common MBA letter of recommendation (LOR) that schools can choose to incorporate into their applications to reduce the burden placed on applicants and recommenders alike.
“The Common Letter of Recommendation (LOR) effort is intended to save you and recommenders valuable time by providing a single set of recommendation questions for each participating school,” reads the GMAC website. “This allows your recommenders to use the same answers for multiple letter submissions, alleviating the workload of having to answer different questions for each school multiple times. You benefit because it makes the ask for several different letters to be written on your behalf much easier.”
Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, NYU Stern School of Business, and Michigan’s Ross School of Business were among the first schools to pilot the Common LOR last year. In addition to a single set of open-ended essay questions, the pilot Common LOR also included a leadership assessment grid inviting recommenders to rate applicants on 16 “competencies and character traits” grouped into four main categories of achievement, influence, personal qualities and academic ability.
“At Johnson, we saw the Common LoR as a clear opportunity to improve the admissions process for candidates and their recommenders in a way that would also add value to our own assessment of applicants,” Judi Byers, Johnson executive director of admissions & financial aid, told Clear Admit. “A thorough and consistent review is important to us and the grid provides a straightforward base of insights that can be assessed and compared reliably while the accompanying letter adds meaningful detail and context,” she added.
Soojin Kwon, managing director of full-time MBA admissions and program at Ross, sees applicants and recommenders as the main beneficiaries of the Common LOR and is pleased that more schools are coming on board. “As more schools adopt it, applicants won’t have to feel like they’re burdening their recommender with completing multiple rec letters with different questions and ratings grids,” she told Clear Admit. “This year, more than a dozen of the top 20 schools are using it.”
Ross was also among the schools to first pilot the Common LOR last year, and Kwon served as part of the GMAC committee that helped craft it.
Common Questions Easy to Agree on, Common Leadership Grid Not
“What we found in using the Common LOR this year past year was that the questions gave us helpful insights into applicants, particularly on the important area of constructive feedback. The questions, however, were fairly similar to what we and other schools were using before, so it was easy for the AdCom to use it,” she notes.
Those questions are as follow:
- Please provide a brief description of your interaction with the applicant and, if applicable, the applicant’s role in your organization. (50 words)
- How does the performance of the applicant compare to that of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? (E.g. what are the applicant’s principal strengths?) (500 words)
- Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response. (500 words)
- Is there anything else we should know? (Optional)
“The rating grid was quite different from what we’d used in the past,” Kwon continued. “It was also the most difficult part for the GMAC advisory group to develop and get agreement upon. The group worked this past year to revise and simplify the grid so that AdComs could get more meaningful insights from it.”
This year, the 16 competencies and character traits from the original grid have been distilled to 12, with specific questions about analytical thinking and information seeking omitted. Johnson and Ross have both incorporated the revised leadership grid into the LOR distributed to applicants as part of their applications, as have most other schools that have this year decided to incorporate both the grid and open-ended essay question portions of the form. UT’s McCombs School of Business and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, notably, still seem to feature the earlier version of the leadership grid in their application, the one that calls on recommenders to assesses applicants on 16 competencies and traits.
