Impulses, a Culinary EMBA, and Immigration Figures – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
How God Influences Your Grocery Bill – Questrom School of Business Blog
BU Questrom Professor of Marketing Didem Kurt recently co-authored new research with the University of Pittsburgh’s J. Jeffrey Inman and Harvard’s Francesca Gino that explored links between “grocery sales data and rates of religious adherence in thousands of counties across the country.”
According to the study, “religion and religious messages were linked to lower spending.”
People who were reminded of God’s presence were less likely than another control group to spend money on “impulse purchases such as magazines and gum,” an effect that the researchers note “persisted whether or not an individual described themselves as religious.”
Kurt explains, “We attribute this result to the notion that thinking about God reminds people of commonly shared values—such as frugality—even if they don’t believe in God. Managers may want to consider proximity to houses of worship when choosing a retail location. They need to be cognizant of the effect of religious cues and reminders on consumer spending.”
You can read the full article here and check out the complete paper on Science Direct.
A Full-Course Meal – Sawyer Business School Blog
The Sawyer Business School Blog recently profiled David Lanci, EMBA ’02, who after many years as a chef, shifted into the food services industry and founded NexDine, which offers “catering and dining services to corporations, schools, colleges, and senior living facilities around the country.”
Lanci told the Sawyer blog that his Suffolk EMBA “gave [him] the confidence to go out and start this company. One thing I really learned from my EMBA is to take a holistic view of everything and never have a singular view. It’s not just about what’s on the plate.”
NexDine founder David Lanci, EMBA ’02
Lanci continues:
“I realized that how you communicate with the people in the group has a dramatic impact on the outcome. I realized it wasn’t just out of sheer will you could get something done. You had to collaborate, and that was the aha moment for me.”
He concludes, “Food is almost the easy part. It’s just as challenging—if not more so—to manage people, manage clients, manage budgets. And in our industry, we’re not making widgets. We can’t do everything the same way for every client. Every location is different. People’s appetites are different.”
You can read the full interview with Lanci here.
Undocumented Immigrant Population Roughly Double Current Estimate – MIT Sloan Newsroom
According to new research from MIT Sloan’s Mohammad Fazel-Zarandi and Yale’s Edward Kaplan and Jonathan Feinstein, “the number of undocumented immigrants living in the country is about 22.1 million, nearly twice the most prominent current estimate of 11.3 million.”
Fazel-Zarandi explains, “It’s likely that undocumented immigrants are more difficult to locate and survey than other foreign-born residents and if contacted, they may be inclined to misreport their country of origin, citizenship, and number of household residents, fearing the legal consequences of revealing their status.”
He continues:
“A common argument in favor of a tougher immigration policy is that people who have entered the country illegally elevate levels of violent criminal activity.”
“Whatever the extent of criminality that is assessed, it’s clear that crime statistics be thought of in relation to a substantially larger population of undocumented immigrants. This lessens the risk in per capita terms. What’s acceptable for a population of 11 million is unlikely to be sufficient for a population of 22 million.”
You can read the full article here.
10 Highest GPA Averages in the Business School World
The role of a GPA in MBA admissions is a hotly debated topic among both admissions officers and applicants. How much does it really matter? Does a low GPA destroy your chances of getting into a top business school?
One of the most important things to keep in mind when considering how your undergraduate GPA will impact the MBA admissions process is the fact that not all GPAs are alike. Far from a standardized figure, GPA and the way it’s measured can vary from school to school- even major to major. For this reason, it can be difficult to use the GPA’s of different applicants as any accurate predictor of success.
An student’s GPA will always be an important part of the admissions process, because it helps tell admissions officers about past academic success. Still, admissions officers are well aware of the high level of variability between GPA scores. Taking this into account, most officers working in MBA admissions will always look for more to an individual’s story than just the GPA. Numbers like a GMAT/GRE can often paint a much more exact picture of future academic success than the highly variable GPA. Designed for standardization and to test individuals on the specific challenges of an MBA, a GMAT score allows admissions officials specific insight into each application.
When considering GPA, a general rule of thumb is to not ride or die by this number—whether for better or for worse. A low undergraduate GPA doesn’t necessarily spell disaster for one’s MBA ambitions, and even a perfect 4.0 can’t save an application if the other factors don’t add up.
Overall, the exact number of an undergraduate GPA may be less important than the story behind it. If your low GPA was a result of illness or another external factor while in school, personal statements on the application are a great opportunity to give context behind the numbers and help tell your story to admissions officials.
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Nevertheless, getting a sense of the average undergraduate GPA for your prospective programs can help give provide crucial insights. Class profiles and statistics for business schools throughout the country can give prospective students a good sense of the typical student looks like in each program, and help applicants decide if they’ll be a good fit.
Below, we take a look at the top 10 MBA programs with the highest average undergrad GPA. Take a closer look at these top schools to get an idea of the average student in each program- and your potential future classmates.
10 Highest GPA Averages for MBAs
1. Stanford University Graduate School of Business
The highest GPA average for MBA students in the U.S. belongs to the class at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. For the Class of 2019, the average undergrad GPA was 3.74. This is down slightly from the school’s 2015 average of 3.75.
2. Harvard Business School
Often jockeying for position with Stanford, HBS took the number two spot this year with an average undergrad GPA score of 3.71. Three years ago, HBS still loomed large with a 3.66 average, and it just keeps getting higher.
3. Haas School of Business – UC Berkeley
Staying on the heels of Harvard, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley takes a top spot today with an undergraduate GPA of 3.7. This is a slight increase from the school’s 2015 average of 3.66.
The Haas School of Business GPA average for MBA applicants rose from 3.66 to 3.7 since 2015.
4. Yale School of Management
Significantly up from its GPA average of 3.6 in 2015, the Yale School of Management today has one of the highest undergraduate GPAs in the country at an average of 3.69.
5. Booth School of Business – University of Chicago
The MBA at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business has consistently maintained one of the top GPA averages for programs in the U.S., up from 3.59 in 2015 to 3.6 this year.
6. The Wharton School – University of Pennsylvania
The Wharton School, consistently recognized for having some of the country’s top business programs, is nothing if not consistent. With a 3.6 average for incoming students between 2012 and 2015, Wharton maintains a perfect 3.6 average GPA this year as well.
7. Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University
Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management is another school where consistency is key. From 2014 to today the school has remained at an undergraduate GPA average of 3.6
The average Kellogg undergraduate GPA for MBA students has stayed at 3.6 since 2014.
8. Tuck School of Business – Dartmouth College
The average GPA for incoming students at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business has gone up and down throughout the years, but has consistently stayed among the highest in the country- down slightly from 3.52 in 2015 to 3.51 this year.
9. Columbia University – Columbia Business School
The Columbia Business School has always received distinctions as one of the top MBA programs in the country, and their average GPA for incoming students at 3.5—which has stayed the same for more than five years—is no exception.
10. MIT – Sloan School of Management
Typically placing much higher on the list, the average Sloan School of Management at MIT has decreased in recent years, from 3.54 in 2015 to 3.49 for this year’s incoming class. The number nonetheless still remains among the highest average GPAs for MBA programs throughout the country.
March Madness Begins: Consortium MBA Draft Takes Place Today
Clear Admit recently highlighted this year’s Consortium for Graduate Study in Management MBA Draft, which is offering huge scholarship payouts for a lucky few. Check it out below.
No, it has nothing to do with basketball. A draft of another sort will take place today, but for some MBA applicants it could be as big as getting by the Golden State Warriors. We’re talking about the annual draft for the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. Each year, the group’s member business schools offer tens of millions of dollars in fellowships to hundreds of MBA applicants, most under-represented minorities.
Held annually in mid-March, the draft is a complex matching up of leading business schools and applicants based on the order of preference expressed by each. Consortium member schools include the University of Michigan’s Ross School, UVA’s Darden School, UC Berkeley’s Haas School, Dartmouth’s Tuck School, and NYU Stern, to name just a few. When applicants apply as part of the Consortium Fellowship process, they benefit from being able to apply to six of the 19 members schools using a single application (with volume discounts for multiple schools). But then comes the tough—and critical—part.
The Importance of Ranking Your Consortium Schools Carefully
You have to rank your selected schools in order of your desire to attend, which will determine the order in which you’ll be considered for the Consortium Fellowship, a merit-based, full-tuition award. (There is the pesky little detail about needing to gain admission to a school or schools on your list.) Provided you are admitted to some or all of the schools on your list, your ranking then comes into play. If your first-ranked school declines to award you funding through the Consortium, the opportunity will be passed on to the next school on your list, and so on. According to a Consortium employee, the order in which applicants have ranked their choices is not revealed explicitly to the schools. Instead, each school is just not given an opportunity to offer you the fellowship until theirs is the top remaining school on your list.
Of course, another important part of the Consortium application is demonstrating a proven commitment to increasing the ranks of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans in business education and corporate leadership. The Consortium was founded in 1966 by Washington University professor Sterling Schoen around the mission of equipping more African American men with the requisite business skills to succeed in corporate America. Three schools and 21 men took part in the first year. Additional schools began to join as members, and in 1970 applicant membership was widened to women, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. In 2004, in compliance with a Supreme Court ruling a year earlier, membership was opened to all U.S. citizens and permanent residents who demonstrate a track record of supporting the Consortium vision.
Today’s Consortium MBA Draft Day
Fast forward to today, draft day. Representatives from the member schools are gathering with Consortium staff to begin the complicated matchmaking process, which at least in recent years has taken place in a St. Louis hotel room near the Consortium’s Chesterfield, MO, headquarters. Unless things have changed dramatically with recent additions to the number of member schools—the group has grown from 17 in 2011 to 19 this past July—the process includes six rounds and takes about four hours to complete.
Schools come in with their draft picks in hand, and the school designated as first choice by the most applicants gets to choose as many of those students as it wants to offer the fellowship. And so it continues, passing on to each successive school to select from its first-round applicants. If a school passes on an applicant at any time in the process, another school can then select that applicant in a later round.
From the applicant’s point of view, here’s what it looks like: Let’s say that Yale SOM is your first-ranked school and you are admitted into its MBA program. In today’s draft, Yale SOM will have first dibs on offering you the Consortium Fellowship. If Yale SOM does offer you the fellowship, everyone’s happy and you can choose to attend with the benefit of the fellowship. You may still be admitted to other programs on your list, but these programs cannot offer you the Consortium Fellowship.
But say you were admitted to Yale SOM but it doesn’t offer you the fellowship—or you don’t get into Yale—then the opportunity to offer you the fellowship is made available to your second-ranked school, and on down the line.
While only one school can offer you the Consortium Fellowship, that does not preclude the other schools on your list from offering you other school-specific scholarship funding. Once awarded by one school, the Consortium Fellowship is not transferable to another.
Regardless of whether you ultimately accept the fellowship and attend the school that offers it, you retain your Consortium membership status, granted as part of the application process. As long as you attend a school within the Consortium, you’ll get take advantage of a wide range of membership benefits, including valuable recruitment and networking events, webinars, and chats.
Why Would Anyone Turn Down a Consortium Fellowship?
Consortium member schools will typically select more students than they have fellowships for to account for the fact that some fellowship recipients will ultimately turn down their offers. What would make a fellowship applicant turn down a free ride to a top-ranked business school, you ask? Sometimes it’s admission to an even higher-ranked business school not part of the Consortium (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg, MIT Sloan, and Chicago Booth don’t play the Consortium game). This becomes an easier decision if these other schools offer their own attractive financial aid enticements, which they often do. So in the coming Decision Week(s), keep in mind that schools that have picked you now get to anxiously await word of whether you pick them. It’s nice when the tables get turned, right?
The official Consortium Fellowship notification deadline is March 23rd, but we’d guess many schools will be eager to share the news of the fellowship award in tandem with the news of acceptance. It should be fun to watch on MBA LiveWire! Those of us here at Clear Admit are wishing luck to the applicants and schools involved in today’s Consortium MBA Draft and hope some terrific matches are made, resulting in hundreds of successful MBA careers and further expansion of the Consortium mission’s reach.
To those on MBA Livewire who have speculated about why some Consortium applicants learned of decisions from certain schools before stated decision deadlines, that’s also related to today’s draft. Consortium member schools will have needed to make admissions decisions for their potential drafts picks by today, regardless of the school’s own decision deadline. Some schools may choose to communicate those decisions to applicants early since they already will have been reached.
Learn more about the Consortium application process here. Applications for the Class of 2021 open in August 2018 are due in two rounds, the first in October 2018, and the second in January 2019.
What Is The Worst MBA Advice You Have Ever Heard?
The path to business school is paved with experts and know-nothing-know-it-alls alike—it’s just hard to tell the difference sometimes.
This is especially true when it comes to “dos” and “don’ts” of the trade. You’re bound to encounter confusing, conflicting, or just plain bad advice in any field but there’s something about business school that seems to attract meaningless jargon like flies to honey.
I spoke to Accepted’s Linda Abraham and North Star Admissions’ Karen Marks, two leading admissions counselors and bonafide MBA experts, about the eight worst pieces of advice most commonly doled out to MBAs-to-be.
“Tell them what they want to hear.”
“The admissions committee will see through it, the applicant will blend into the gray mass of applicants who are making the same mistake, and at competitive schools, will get dinged,” Abraham writes. “Telling schools what you think they want to hear means telling them what you don’t know, and it also means you’re not telling them what you want them to know.”
“If you are waitlisted, ignore the school’s directions and make a dramatic gesture to demonstrate your interest.”
According to Marks, “People … have been known to do everything from emailing the admissions office once a day (relatively benign, but inappropriate) to sending homemade gifts (creepy) to showing up in the admissions office and refusing to leave until they have spoken with the Dean. All of this backfires, it’s really important to listen to the school’s directions and express your interest in ways that underscore your ability to follow directions, and your understanding of the culture.”
“Change your career goals and personal story for each school.”
Marks explains, “Your goals and core narrative should remain constant, no matter what school you are applying to. Don’t tell Stanford that you want to work in micro-finance and Kellogg that you dream of marketing, just because you think it’s what they want to hear.”
Abraham recalls an interaction she had with “an applicant who came to us initially for Rejection Review.” This applicant was told by his consultant, a former Yale SOM adcom director, “she would have rejected him also because the applicant’s goal made no sense given his work experience, education and extra-curricular activities. He explained that his friends had told him to use the “hot” goal that year, so he used it in his application. Next year he applied with an authentic goal (and app) and was accepted to an M7 school.”
“You have no chance of getting into a top MBA program because you didn’t go to a top undergrad.”
Abraham couldn’t disagree more with this statement.
“If an applicant excelled at their local college, shows leadership, and has had an impactful career, and has a competitive test score, they have a chance at elite MBA programs,” she says.
“You have a 750-plus GMAT and a 3.9 GPA, you’re in anywhere.”
Both counselors call hogwash on this one.
“You can’t rest on academic laurels. Yes, those numbers are very attractive to top b-schools, but if they are combined with arrogance—forget it. Schools also want to see leadership and impact in their accepted students. So, if Super Student wasn’t a super employee or entrepreneur or campus community member, those stats do not guarantee acceptance at top MBA programs.”
“Your goals don’t really matter, because you’re likely to change them once at b-school.”
Abraham writes, “Yes, your goals are likely to change and schools know that, but they at least want you to start their program with direction and a goal they know they can help you achieve. Goals are a major component in fit at most top MBA programs. And if yours are vague or don’t match the strengths of your target schools, then you simply aren’t showing fit.”
“If you have a blind interview, you can wing it.”
“You can wing it. BUT you are unlikely to be as effective as the other applicants who prepare,” Abraham notes.
“They will have researched the school, know exactly why they want to attend this program, and mined their own experiences and achievements so they are ready to show they belong at the interviewing school and will contribute to the school’s student body and alumni network.”
“Oh, and they also have thoughtful questions to ask the interviewer.”
“You won’t get in if your numbers are below an arbitrary number, so don’t even bother applying.”
Abraham has worked with “multiple clients who had extremely low GMATs and GPAs, below 2.5 and below 600, who have been admitted to Wharton, Booth, HBS, etc. I also admitted applicants with weak numeric profiles to Tuck when I was the Associate Director of Admissions. (They had other stellar qualities).”
Abraham believes that “essays, personality, perspective and life experience are more important than numbers.” She adds, “Application reviews are comprehensive. One element is extremely unlikely to keep you out or carry you across the threshold of a dream MBA program.”
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.
HBS Class of 2019 Profile Reveals Subtle Shifts, New GRE Details
The official Harvard Business School (HBS) Class of 2019 profile is now out—capturing in numbers and pie charts the real live students who started class for the first time yesterday. Not a lot has shifted since HBS released its preliminary class profile earlier this summer, although the Class of 2019 now includes 928 students, suggesting that 13 of those the school was expecting to enroll when it originally reported the class size at 941 made other plans. There are 942 students in the Class of 2018, by comparison.
The percentage of minority students also slipped slightly, from 26 percent reported in the preliminary profile to 25 percent in the actual class (last year’s actual percentage was 26 percent). Female students comprise 42 percent of the class, as earlier reported, again down one percentage point from last year.
In terms of median GMAT, 730 is still HBS’s reported score. That’s the same as last year—and as predicted earlier in the summer. The score range reported included a low of 580 and a high of 790, with the middle 80 percent of the class falling between 700 and 770. Last year, the middle 80 percent was a shade lower, coming in between 690 and 760.
HBS Joins Wharton, Yale in Posting GRE Scores
New in the actual profile posted today are stats on GRE scores, marking the first time HBS has published such data. Chad Losee, the Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, also made a point of sharing this information in a recent blog post, revealing that 12 percent of the class submitted GRE scores and the remaining 88 percent submitted GMAT scores.
“The GRE and GMAT are different tests … and we are truly indifferent about which one you submit,” Losee writes. “Really. We are familiar with each test. Choose the one that allows you to best show your strengths, then move on to the other parts of the application.”
According to the recently posted profile, median GRE scores for both verbal and quantitative at HBS were 164. The score range for verbal was 147 to 170, and the range for quantitative was 151 to 170. HBS did not provide information about the average writing score.
The Wharton School, too, shared GRE data for the first time this year, although specific details about what percentage of the class opted for one test over the other were not made available. Wharton reported average scores, not median scores: 163 verbal, 162 quantitative, and a 4.7 average writing score. The Yale School of Management (SOM) also included GRE test scores in its Class of 2019 profile (median verbal, 166; median quantitative, 164; middle 80 percent verbal, 157 to 170; middle 80 percent quantitative, 160 to 169.)
If three makes a trend—then a trend we have of leading schools emphatically underscoring that they are indeed test agnostic by including GRE scores within their official class profiles.
“We Know You’re Much More Than a Test Score”
In his post, Losee also took pains to underscore that much more than scores go into determining who joins the HBS class each year.
“We know you are much more than a test score,” he writes. “The whole application and interview process are designed to help us get to know you. We’re trying to imagine what you would contribute in the HBS classroom and community. As I’ve written before, our learning model depends on a wide range of talent and perspectives in each class—and we know that not all that talent is measurable in a test.”
Obviously unchanged from the preliminary profile were the total number of applications HBS received this year—10,351—a 6 percent uptick over last year. The profiles posted today and earlier this summer both cited an 11 percent admission rate—which would indicate that 1,138 students made the cut—and a 91 percent yield.
This story has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
