MIT Hackathon Yields Planned Parenthood for Substance Abuse – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Planned Parenthood for Substance Abuse Idea Wins MIT Enterprise Management Lab Hackathon – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan’s 2018 Enterprise Management Lab hackathon recently came and went. This year’s winning concept applied Planned Parenthood’s business model to substance abuse in an attempt to creatively address the ongoing American opioid crisis.
The idea extended substance treatment to include support for friends and family and offer “a one-stop shop for information” to “government entities, nonprofits, hospitals, and rehab clinics.” Kyle R. Chapman, MBA ’19, and member of the winning team, writes:
“We knew a lot of people would try to solve the problem by going upstream. A smart pillbox might address part of the opioid crisis, but the problem is that’s only attacking one point of a really systemic problem.”
Learn more about this year’s hackathon winner here.
Trending Topics in Marketing and Media – Sawyer Business Blog
Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University recently recapped its recent Bridging the Gap seminar, which offered a platform for Boston marketing and media pros to highlight a number of key industry issues for students, including the impact of data privacy on digital advertising; voice-activated devices; and strategies for building brands in the modern era.
Ereni Markos, associate professor of marketing and co-organizer of the event, writes:
“It’s especially important for all of us in the Marketing Department to bring real-world expertise to the Suffolk community and, in turn, for us to share our thinking from the classroom and working with students. Networking is crucial for students to build their professional network early on in their careers.”
You can read more about the seminar here.
Lessons from Tim Ryan ’88 of PwC – Babson Blog
Babson College recently hosted a guest lecture from Senior Partner and Chairman of PwC US Tim Ryan ‘88, who used his talk to highlight three key bits of advice that touched upon respect, reputation, and recognition. He also spoke extensively with the Babson blog after his appearance about what diversity and inclusion means to him.
“If we don’t truly understand one another, we’ll never be the most inclusive workplace in the world. Outside of family, work is where we spend the most amount of our time. It was a catalytic moment, after over a decade of investing in programs, trainings, studies, and testing, when we realized that the baseline of talking and communicating was missed.”
Read more from Babson’s talk with Tim Ryan here.
What are the Fastest MBA Programs in Boston?
Some students want to complete their MBA coursework as quickly and efficiently as possible—time is money after all! Continue reading…
MIT Sloan Student Travel Goes Carbon Conscious with Jetset Offset Program
Over spring break, 100 MIT Sloan students will travel the world to study while immersing themselves in different cultures. It’s a wonderful opportunity with one problem. There’s a pretty significant carbon impact—300 metric tons of carbon dioxide to be exact. But now, a new Jetset Offset pilot program could help lessen that negative impact.
When we fly, we can’t choose the energy efficiency of our plane, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t travel. Instead, it means we should try to lessen our impact on the environment by purchasing carbon offsets, and that’s exactly what the Jetset Offset program does.
In its first year, the pilot program will purchase carbon offsets for four study tours over spring break 2018—three MBA groups and one Master of Finance group. The carbon offsets will take the form of projects that help with carbon emissions. Such projects include reforestation or building renewable energy sources.
According to Yakov Berenshteyn, a ‘19 Leaders for Global Operations Fellow and the creator of the Jetset Offset program, while the impact might not be immediate, it’s a step in the right direction. “This is raising awareness of, and starting to account for, our environmental impacts from student travel,” he said.
The idea for Jetset Offset came about after Berenshteyn realized how many air miles students and staff were logging. In January, for the two-week Leaders for Global Operations Domestic Plant Trek, MIT logged more than 400,000 miles. Berenshteyn couldn’t help but think that there needed to be a counterbalance to all the burned jet fuel. After talking to MIT Sloan Professor John Sterman, he realized that applying carbon offsets and carbon-neutral practices was the best way to make a difference. Duke University had already implemented such a program.
So, for the January trip, the Leaders for Global Operations program purchased 67 metric tons of offsets through Gold Standard, which will go toward reforestation efforts in Panama. For future MIT Sloan trips, the MIT Sloan Student Life Office will pick up the tab.
“Yakov’s idea is exactly the kind of student initiative we love to support,” MIT Sloan associate director of student life Katie Ferrari said. “He is practicing principled, innovative leadership with an eye toward improving the world.”
To read the full news release, visit the MIT Sloan Newsroom.
This article has been edited and republished with permissions from our sister site, Clear Admit.
Chicago Booth, Michigan Rise in New U.S. News Business School Ranking
The new, official U.S. News & World Report ranking of the best business schools in the United States has been released, with some minor shake-ups at the top. For the second year in a row, Harvard Business School remains tied for the first overall in the ranking. However, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business officially supplanted The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which fell back from its tie at the top to third overall.
The rest of the top ten, as we previously mentioned, largely resembled last year’s U.S. News release, except for the inclusion of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the exclusion of the Yale School of Management. Surprisingly, Michigan Ross may have made the strongest showing in the newest ranking, not only managing a position in the top 10, but landing tied for seventh overall—ahead of Columbia Business School and the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. The Yale School of Management slipped to a tie at 11th overall with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
U.S. News & World Report 2019 Best Business School Rankings
| Rank | School |
|---|---|
| 1st (Tied) | Harvard Business School |
| 1st (Tied) | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 3rd | The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania |
| 4th | Stanford GSB |
| 5th | MIT Sloan School of Management |
| 6th | Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management |
| 7th (Tied) | University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross Business School |
| 7th (Tied) | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business |
| 9th | Columbia Business School |
| 10th | Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business |
Chicago Booth, Michigan Shine Among Rising Full-Time MBA Programs
For the first time in school history, the Booth School of Business secured its place atop of the U.S. News ranking (albeit tied with HBS). In a statement, Booth Dean Madhav Rajan noted, “We are pleased to be recognized in this manner, and gratified that the recognition is across the board. We continue to strive to be the pre-eminent academic school of business.”
After its place among the top ten business schools was revealed, Michigan Ross Dean of Business Scott DeRue stated in a release, “We are excited to once again be ranked among the top 10 MBA programs in the country by U.S. News & World Report. This recognition is a testament to the extraordinary talent at Michigan Ross, our innovations in action-based learning, our partnerships with leading companies across the globe, and the most supportive alumni community in the world. We are developing leaders who have the character and capabilities to transform the world through business, and it’s an honor to be recognized among the very best in the world.”
On its website, the school also proudly boasted that, outside of Stanford GSB, no business school in the ranking earned more top ten placements in specialty areas, earning high grades for: “Accounting (No. 4), Entrepreneurship (No. 7), Finance (No. 10), International (No. 5), Management (No. 3), Marketing (No. 4), Non-Profit (No. 5), Productions/Operations (No. 3), and Supply Chain (No. 6).”
Outside of the top ten, the USC Marshall School of Business watched its stock rise again this year. Two years ago, U.S. News handed USC Marshall the 31st spot on its best business school ranking, which jumped to 24th last year, and 20th this year. Just a few spots back of USC was the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, which saw the largest leap of any of the top 25 schools—jumping six spots from the previous year.
Nine schools among the top 100 in the new rankings managed to jump at least ten spots, including three MetroMBA favorites: the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, the Neeley School of Business at TCU, and the Fordham School of Business at Fordham University. Whitman, in fact, tied for second highest rise, improving 18 spots overall from last year’s 88th overall placement to 70th this year. No school improved more, however, than the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, which improved a remarkable 22 spots from last year’s 77th overall placement to 55th this year.
The Syracuse University Whitman School of Management jumped 18 spots in the most recent U.S. News “Best Business Schools” ranking.
A handful of schools also secured a spot in the top 100 after not appearing at all the previous year, including the Howard University School of Business, the American University Kogod School of Business, and Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University.
Which Schools Fell The Hardest?
Along with the Yale School of Management losing its prestigious top ten status, a handful of schools tumbled in the 2019 ranking—with some virtually flat-lining. No school fell more than the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University, slipping an astounding 35 spots from 55th last year to 92nd this year. Eleven schools lost their top 100 status in total. The reasoning behind the sudden drops are likely linked to the publication’s change in how it ranks the business schools.
In regards to the ranking methodology, U.S. News placed less value in test scores and student GPA. In a release this afternoon, U.S. News reported the following:
“For the first time U.S. News reduced the value of reported GPA, GRE and GMAT scores for full-time and part-time MBA programs and GRE scores in the education rankings if less than 50 percent of an entering class submitted these scores. U.S. News believes this lack of data means the scores are not representative of the entire class.”
The change, arguably, could stem from the fallout of the Temple University Fox School of Business, which was knocked off all of the publication’s rankings for the 2018 calendar year because of falsely reported data regarding test scores.
Stay tuned to MetroMBA on all the biggest MBA ranking news.
The Best Business Schools for Landing Top Consulting Jobs
Clear Admit recently explored which business schools help prepare MBAs the most for a career in consulting, which you can read below.
With starting salaries in the $140,000 to $150,000 range and a customary $25,000 signing bonus on top of that, it’s no wonder so many business school students target the prestige consulting firms known as the “MBB”—McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Bain & Company—as their post-MBA landing pads. That $170,000+ annual compensation package can quickly cut any MBA loan debt you may have taken on down to size.
Indeed, management consulting has been one of the most coveted career paths for fresh MBA grads for ages. And though the technology industry has in recent years been stealing some grads from the consulting industry’s traditional slice of the pie, the most recent MBA employment reports reveal that consulting is already making a comeback against tech at certain schools.
The opportunity to work with a range of clients comprised of many of the world’s most celebrated businesses across industries—tech included—is part of the appeal of consulting. In many ways, a top consulting gig allows MBA grads to continue their management education while getting paid for it—and further honing their skills and expertise by helping solve a wide variety of business challenges. And, not for nothing, breaking into the MBB is a highly competitive pursuit—one that almost assures that your colleagues will be smart, driven people you’ll get a lot out of working with.
Finally, where the top consulting firms are choosing to find their talent reflects on the quality of the education those schools’ students are getting. In many ways, the hiring practices of the MBB can serve as a gold star standard of sorts for MBA programs.
Elite Firms Hire Grads from Elite Business Schools
The crème de la crème of leading business school talent has headed toward the top consulting firms for decades—and performed well there—creating a virtuous circle of sorts in which the firms’ appetite for such talent only grows. And while this piece focuses on MBB, we should note that a host of other consulting firms—Deloitte, A.T. Kearney, Accenture, Strategy&, and Oliver Wyman among others—are also highly prized post-MBA destinations.
If you are looking to see which business schools send the greatest percentage of their graduates into consulting overall, don’t miss our September 2017 analysis of leading consulting industry feeder schools. Which schools top the list? And what stands out about how these schools successfully train students for careers in consulting?
Looking at Class of 2016 graduates, the University of Virginia’s Darden School led the pack, with 38 percent of its graduates heading into consulting. Columbia Business School was next, sending 35 percent, followed closely by Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, which sent 33 percent.
The 2017 employment reports, which have been released since our analysis last fall, show some shifts year over year. Darden tied with Emory’s Goizueta School of Business in terms of the percentage of Class of 2017 grads who headed into consulting, with each school sending 34 percent. Close on their heels were Columbia, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School. All four sent 33 percent of their most recent graduating class off to consulting firms.
2 Non-U.S. Schools Lead All Others in Consulting-Bound ’17 MBA Grads
But year after year, one thing remains the same. INSEAD, with campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, beats all leading U.S. business schools when it comes to consulting. INSEAD’s 2016 MBA employment report, detailing employment outcomes for December 2015 and July 2016 INSEAD grads, shows that 46 percent went into consulting. And the most recent figures reveal that almost a full half—49 percent—of the 1,029 students who completed the INSEAD MBA program in December 2016 and July 2017 chose to either enter or return to the consulting field.
We should note here that INSEAD is distinct from many other schools in that it includes sponsored students who are returning to their pre-MBA employers among its hiring stats. This is in contrast to many U.S. schools, where the reported number and percentage of students hired by sector and employer corresponds to those students actively seeking employment, excluding sponsored students. Of the 49 percent of INSEAD 2017 grads headed into consulting, 33 percent were new hires and the remaining 16 percent were returnees.
London Business School (LBS) was the runner-up for the Class of 2017, sending 41 percent of grads into consulting. This was a 6 percentage-point gain over the school’s previous class of MBA graduates. Like INSEAD, LBS’s reported sector designation and top employer information includes sponsored students, only its employment report does not disclose what percentage of the class those returning students represent.
How to Ace These 5 MBA Interview Questions
Clear Admit recently explored 5 crucial interview questions you’ll need to know during the height of MBA interview season, based off the site’s in-depth interview guides and archives, which you can read below.
Interviews, interviews, interviews … it’s all anyone seems to be talking about these days, and with good reason. Harvard Business School, Michigan’s Ross School, Chicago Booth, NYU Stern, and UVA Darden are just some of the schools that have already or are in the process of sending out Round 2 interview invitations. Stanford GSB, MIT Sloan, and UPenn / Wharton are among those soon to come.
Instead of driving yourself crazy with worry, why not buckle down and perfect your answers to the questions you are most likely to be asked? To help you prepare, we’ve scoured our Interview Guides and Interview Archive to compile our very own list of five MBA interview questions you need to ace. These questions are among those that most often make their way into MBA admissions interviews at leading schools.
While the questions listed here are most commonly asked as part of blind interviews, they can certainly also come up in the course of non-blind interviews. In those cases, you’ll want to be prepared to go deeper into some of the specific experiences you shared in your application. (Check out our quick refresher on the difference between blind and non-blind interviews).
For detailed insights into each school’s interview process, the questions they ask, and how to tackle those questions, access Clear Admit’s Interview Guides.
5 MBA Admissions Interview Questions You Need to Ace
Walk me through your résumé.
The real trick with answering this open-ended question is to gauge how much detail is too much. Imposing a structure can help. “It’s best to err on the side of brevity,” says Alex Brown, who asked this very question of many hopeful Wharton applicants during his time working in admissions at the Philadelphia school. “Think of this résumé walk-through as simply laying the groundwork for deeper discussion of your background and accomplishments.” A good idea is to develop a two- to three-minute run-through, beginning with where you grew up and went to college, what you studied and perhaps something you enjoy outside of work. Then move into a concise overview of your work experience, beginning with your first job and continuing to present day, making sure to explain why you made the choices you did and what you learned in each major role. “This kind of high-level overview gives your interviewer the perfect opportunity to ask for more detail about specific points if she wants it,” Brown says. If you have a gap of three or more months due to unemployment or some other cause, you should be prepared to address it, Brown warns, although in a short résumé question as part of the interview, it may not come up.
What are your career goals?
With any luck, you will already have a well-honed response to this question, developed and refined as part of the process of writing your application essays. “If you are looking to shift industry or function, this is your chance to explain your reasoning and that you have carefully thought through what may be involved in successfully making the transition,” Brown says. Keep in mind why the adcom is asking this question, Brown suggests. “They want to know how focused you are on the MBA and whether you are in a position to take advantage of the resources business school offers or at risk of getting overwhelmed,” he says. Present a very clear post-MBA goal, Brown recommends. “Schools prefer to admit students who can explain exactly what kind of job they want to pursue beyond graduation and articulate how it will set them up to obtain their long-term career objectives,” he says. Schools are also looking, with this question, to see if your goals make sense and are feasible in light of your past experiences; are you able to articulate a clear path and plan?
Why X school?
Here, schools want to see if you have really done your research on their program and whether you are a good fit with their culture. So, do your research. “I recommend a three-pronged approach to make a truly compelling case for your interest in a given school,” Brown says. Start with academics, he says, naming specific courses and professors that you are interested in. “Remember, your interviewer wants to see that you have really researched the school.” Second, mention specific clubs, conferences and other special programs that will help position you for your career goals. “Even better, show how you would contribute to the school community, such as by organizing an event to share specific knowledge you bring with your future classmates,” Brown suggests. Third, show that you have a good understanding of the school’s community, culture, class size and location and have thought about how these fit with your personality, goals and background. “If you have visited campus or talked with current students or alumni—definitely say so, lead with this.” Brown stresses. “Beyond showing that you’ve invested time in getting to know the school, this also helps your interviewer have a mental picture of you on campus.” he says.
Give us an example of a time you took a leadership role.
The way interviewers ask this question can vary—sometimes you’ll be asked directly about your most notable leadership experience and other times you’ll be invited to describe your general leadership style. “It’s important to keep a few basic principles about leadership in mind,” Brown says. “A leader is someone who has a strong vision or point of view and is able to see things others are not,” he continues. A leader must also have excellent communication skills. Choose an example that demonstrates these points. An ideal leadership example will describe a time when you negotiated with and persuaded key stakeholders, such as clients or a supervisor, to buy into your vision and then delegated the work and managed colleagues or juniors. “If you encountered obstacles along the way, share how you dealt with them,” Brown says. “If possible, you should also show success through quantified results,” he adds. As important as a successful outcome is demonstrating how you drew on the help of others where necessary. “No one is successful on their own,” Brown says. Show that you understand that strong leadership means teamwork and playing well with others, he says.
Tell us about a time you failed.
As tempting as it may be to say that you’ve never failed at anything…that is not what that adcom is looking for here. “In fact, this is a favorite question for those who appear to be ‘rock stars’ on paper,” Brown says. But rock stars make mistakes, and having an example in your back pocket of a time things did not go according to plan can show humility as well as your capacity to learn and grow. “The best answer to this type of question ends with a more recent experience where you took the lesson you learned from the failure and put it into play, affecting a better outcome.” he says.
These five questions certainly don’t cover everything your interviewer is likely to ask you, but they do touch upon some of the things you’re most likely to be called upon to share as part of your MBA admissions interview. You can take some of the anxiety out of the interview process by giving each one some thought, drawing on some relevant experiences from your past, and practicing the responses you would give. Don’t practice too much so that you appear overly rehearsed—since it’s important to seem both authentic and genuine—but prepare enough so that you’ll be ready to truly put your best self forward.
