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Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m Janet Nakano. With MBA related websites, articles, blogs, rankings, organizations, events, books, and of course podcasts there is a wealth of information out there on the MBA. This time we’re going to highlight just a few of those resources that can help you in your application process. You’ll hear about the MBA Tour, Forte Forums, QS World MBA Tour and business school guides by the Princeton Review and Clear Admit. You’ll learn what makes each unique and how best to utilize these resources.

The MBA Tour organizes MBA events in a host of cities throughout the world. Their goal is to help educate applicants about various schools and the admissions process. I had a chance to visit one of their events in New York City, recently. The morning started off with small panel discussions on how admissions decisions get made. This one I joined had admissions directors from the Johnson School at Cornell University, Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Management and Beirut College. Here are some highlights from the discussion, “When you talk about the application essays it’s very, very simple but answer the question. That’s the best advice that I can give, answer the question. We get applications every year where the person has not answered the question; we don’t know where they are going in the answer of the question. Everybody kind of looks at me funny or cross eyed on that. You really have to take the time to make sure exactly what the school is asking and put together a great answer. One of things that I urge students to do is to take your response to the essay question and give it to a friend of yours and say read this and tell me what the question was. If your friend comes back and says oh the question was x, y, z and it matches then great, move on to the next essay. That’s a great simple, easy way to make sure that that’s a great easy, simple way to make sure you’ve answered the question. Regarding essays every year I have people laugh too, at the Johnson School we’ll get a statement at the close of the essay that says and this is why I really want to go to USC. Or whatever x school is, put in there. Everybody laughs, that’s a deny. If you can’t take five minutes to read the essay that you are sending to each of our schools and you can’t identify who we are then that’s a big problem. That means you really have to take the time, don’t do your application at 11:55 on the night of the deadline date. Get it done a couple weeks in advance and check it through.”

“The GMAT and the test aside, work experience, another key, key question that we get is how much work experience do I need coming into a MBA program? That also will vary from school to school but I can just tell you having been through a MBA program there’s a very strong value in having a base of work experience to be able to come into a program and be able to take what you’re learning in the classroom and apply it to the actual experiences that you’ve had over the course of your career to date. Really the value of the other students surround you learning from you and you learning from those students, that’s part of the reason why MBA programs are looking for work experience coming into a program. It’s typical, you know every school has different averages but most schools the way that they look at the work experience is not necessarily how many years of work experience do you have but it’s more what’s the quality of that work experience? How did you impact the organization in which you worked over the course of the time that you were there? Did you show progression within that organization, any sort of promotions? Those are things that we’re looking at. Someone might come in with three years of work experience that may be great work experience, has shown progression and would be a better candidate than someone with five years of work experience. So it is a situation where it’s not bottom line, how many years do you have, it’s really what was that experience and that’s an important factor. You should be learning as much from the person sitting to your right and to your left in a MBA program as even the faculty member in the front of the room and that’s why the programs are designed for students coming in with work experience.”

For the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon schools gave quick mini presentations that allowed perspective students to get to know the programs and ask questions. This one was for USC Marshall School of Business, “For those of you who have never visited USC, I really recommend doing that. I would recommend that for any program that you apply to. Really get a chance to visit if you can because sitting in the classroom, being on the campus, being in the building will give you a whole different feeling of what the MBA program is going to be like and where you will spend those two years. And if it feels right and the people that you meet are folks that you like and that you enjoy talking to and that you want to a part of, you know both in your professional and your personal network then that’s really going to give you a sense of whether or not that program is right for you. One of the things that I talk about any time I speak with a perspective student is really about the fit. In work when you’re looking for your job, a lot of it is about the culture, not just about the actually function of your job, but the company culture. You read about it online, you’re on blogs, you’re on websites. Same thing stands for MBA programs but even more importantly, rather than a job where you might switch jobs and have several during your career; with a MBA program you’re only getting one MBA. So think about that, where do you want to spend those two years, where do you want your degree to come from and where do you want to carry on that degree afterward. Because for us at Marshall we don’t just look at it as a two year degree and then you’re out the door and that’s it. We expect you to be apart of that community, we hope that you want to be apart of that community even after your graduate because your degree is something that you will carry with you throughout your career and you’re going to be part of a network that we’re very proud of and we hope you want to be a part of and continue to be a part of long after you finish your program.”

The business school fair followed the presentations which offered a chance for perspective students to speak to admissions representatives and alumni directly. During this time I sat down with Peter von Loesecke, Managing Director of the MBA Tour. So we’re here at the MBA Tour in New York City. So it seems like there’s different schools that go to different cities with you, like for example, here you know we see a lot of regional schools. “Yes. With the MBA Tour our tours across the US is designed to have schools at the event that are national brands as well as very strong regional brands. The reason for that is that we know from serving students that their application trends are to apply to very top schools in their region as well as top schools across the country and then a lot of students are looking for part-time or even executive MBAs with strong regional schools that have very strong alumni connections and connections with companies.”

So how do you go about choosing which schools come to which event? “The way we choose schools for each event and some of it is self selecting by the schools themselves but we do it through an invitation process with the schools and we invite all of the national brands to sign up for the cities across the US. Then we invite regional schools, very strong regional schools and we make sure that they’re included as part of the slate of schools at that event.”

So how should an applicant decide which event to go to? “Well an applicant is looking for a specific school can go on that school’s website and see if they will be at the MBA Tour event. The best thing a perspective MBA can do with our events is if they’re still researching schools, I would encourage them to go to the individual school presentations as well as the admissions panels to learn about admissions criteria. It’s best to talk with alumni to understand the value of the degree and the opportunities that can be presented to you in the city which you want to work. If the event is in the city where you want to work, you want to make sure that that school has got some good options backed to that city in terms of business or hiring connections. The school representatives in combination with alumni should help you make that decision. I would also encourage students to travel or visit as many schools as they can. At least five if those schools are on their target list for applying to. One of the requirements for traveling with the MBA Tour School is that we insist on school representation at our events, we do that because if a student comes along and they want to talk about admissions criteria and their chances for admissions and alum cannot always answer those questions. Recent alumni are good for reflecting on the value of the degree in the local market. Also their recent experience with the curriculum and certain professors and what it is like to go to that school, all very good information. But when it comes down to really understanding what are my chances to getting into my school, the alumni does not have that view that a school representative would.” So that’s your focus? Is to, “Yes, our focus is to travel with the best knowledgeable people about that school.”

QS World MBA Tour is also a MBA touring organization; it provides opportunities for candidates to research business schools. Their goal is to help you make informed decisions on your education and career. Nunzio Quacquarelli is Director of QS World MBA Tour. I asked him what their tours offered to applicants, “The QS World MBA Tour are a series of fairs held around the world. So this fall we have 48 fairs in 33 cities on all of the main continents and it enables MBA applicants to meet and network, discuss their own concerns with admissions directors and MBA alumni. We travel with 390 business schools in total. Typically we would have between 80 and 120 schools at any given fair.”

So would perspective students see which schools will be traveling to their city, “It’s very transparent so they go to topmba.com and they click to register for the World MBA Tour and as part of that registration process they can select or see the participating schools and select the city and it will give them a full list of the schools taking part in each city.”

And during these events do you have any other types of resources? Is it just the fair or you know do you have panel discussions? Do you have anything else going on? “We run quite a comprehensive program on the day of the fair. So we have a pre-fair panel which on a weekday would run from 5-6 or on a weekend from 2-3PM and in this pre-fair panel we’ll have maybe five or six business school representatives talking about the admissions process and offering advice on how to select a school, how to prepare for the application and how to improve your chance of success. During the fair we will usually have a GMAT advisory session where a GMAT expert will provide some input and tips on how to prepare for the GMAT and how to improve your GMAT score. We have a master class where a leading profession from an international business school will actually deliver a sample MBA class which we find is very popular, candidates really like to get a taste for what life in a business school will be like. Then we sometimes have alumni career panels. An alumni career panel will have alumni from leading business schools who will share their experiences and offer input and advice about the job market for MBAs and how a MBA has really helped them in their own career progression. That’s a typical schedule of our seminar it does vary city by city depending on availability of the individuals.”

How would you recommend perspectives use your event? “I think preparing beforehand is helpful. On our website topmba.com we carry a lot of advisory articles, we also have a searchable score card database called 330 Schools which will enable them to understand and compare the schools sort of perhaps most relevant to them. This will give them some foundation and when they go to the fair we encourage them to ask questions that will help them make up their own mind about their MBA choice. Very personal questions about their career aspirations, how a business school can help them achieve their own career aspirations rather than generic questions. Too many candidates go to a fair and ask questions about you know what GMAT score do you require, what’s your minimum age requirement, all of that information is available on topmba.com or other websites in advance. So we really encourage candidates to do that little bit of due diligence beforehand and then ask more in-depth questions about how specific business schools can help them achieve their own career objectives.”

Is there a cost? “Most of the fairs are free if you pre-register. In a few cities where demand is too great we charge a minimal amount like $5.00 at the door. But if you pre-register at topmba.com entry is normally free. Our next fair just starting in Europe so we’ve completed our North America schedule for the fall and we have fairs starting in Moscow today, London on Saturday and progressing through Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, Athens, Istanbul, even going to Tel Aviv during the month of October. Then in November we have fairs throughout Asia Pacific and the end of November-early December we’re in India and the Middle East.”

The Princeton Review just released the 2008 edition of its annual business school guide book called Best 290 Business Schools. Schools are profiled on academics, admissions, financial aid, campus life as well as career placement. Robert Franek is Publisher of Princeton Review, “It’s nearly a phone book size publication but it’s based on the opinion of 19,000 current business school students. We reached directly out to whom we would consider B school experts, students in classroom seats and ask them everything from their experience in the classroom to career prospects, best professors, best opportunities for women, best opportunities for minorities and then they reported those questions and that data directly back to the Princeton Review. I mean we do look at the quantitative data as well so you know thinking about how competitive the environment is to get into a particular business school so GMAT scores, of course undergraduate GPA, so all of that quantitative data is available in the book. But I think the real mission of the book and where it serves great value is that it’s based on that 19,000 student opinion survey data.”

Should they be reading this book from beginning to end or what is the best way to go about, I mean 290 is a lot of schools, “It’s a lot of schools, you’re right. I think the best way is to you know ask yourself do you want an experience in your local community, do you want an international experience, do you want to experience a school in California if you live in New York City. I think that those sort of raw things will widdle down the list. You know I think for a student that is starting very early it’s a great read. You know I think that you’ll find out though schools, although their raw scores might be the same, they’re very different when it comes to campus culture, when it comes to classroom culture. So I think depending on how much time you have you can read the whole book but if you’re looking for sort of triage them focusing on schools in the tri-state area lets say if you’re from New York City this book will provide a great service as well but also a palatable list.”

And rankings, do you guys have new interest in rankings to report? “Yes, we have 11 rankings altogether. Some of the new ones and frankly I think the most interesting are best overall classroom experience list. And then the second one in our best career prospects list. You know I think these are certainly substantive and noteworthy because they’re focusing on again the practical outcome of what students are doing in the classroom. So is their classroom experience engaging from professors? Are their professors embracing new trends in education? Do they challenge students in the classroom? Are class discussions encouraged? I think students want to and need to know those things. On the second list, career prospects when thinking about the quality of the companies that are coming in to that campus to start to recruit, the level of preparation that students receive before they have their first recruitment fair or something like that. And also is that school pushing students to off-campus projects whether they be internships, experiential learning, and mentorships. Again all of that stuff is baked into that best career prospects list.”

Clear Admit offers business school guides for a select group of top MBA programs. These guides offer in-depth information including school history, student demographics, the academic calendar, curriculum, electives, even grading systems, faculty, specializations and admissions. You can download the guides online for $35 each. Graham Richmond is Clear Admit’s co-founder, “The Clear Admit guides are currently available for 16 schools and we’ve been sort of producing them, they’re fairly intensive in terms of on the production side of our ability to gather all of the information about a school and produce what I would call a research report on the program. So thus far we’ve done 16 and they range and we’ve got most of the usual suspects when it comes to kind of leading MBA programs. We basically looked at the schools that our clients typically apply to and then we sort of develop the set of school guides around that. So there’s Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Kellogg, UCLA, Darton, Tuck basically all the usual suspects.”

How would you suggest that an applicant use the information in your guides? “We actually think that there are sort of four points in the MBA process that a Clear Admit school guide could come in handy. The first would be if you’re thinking about business school and trying to assemble a list of target programs, you could use the Clear Admit School Guides to learn about each school, see how they compare and make some decisions about where you’d fit. So that would be the first place that you could use them. The second place that we see candidates using the guides is when they’re in the essay writing process, so they already determined which schools they are going to apply to and they purchase the Clear Admit school guides for those programs, read up on them, learn about the history of the program, the great professors, clubs that are available, etc. Then they use that information to bring their essays to life a little bit when it comes to incorporating school specific detail into their essays because obviously one of the key things that you have to do when you apply is make a case to the school that you’re interested in them so showcasing your knowledge is one way to do that. The third thing that we found is that applicants are buying them before they go for an interview at a school. So they feel like they’ve learned a lot about the program, they’ve wrote their essays and then they get invited to an interview and they’re looking for a kind of executive summary, kind of research report on the program that they can download off the web and throw in their brief case and read on the plane to the interview. So it’s a great kind of refresher, summary of the program that would really help someone who is trying to quickly get a handle on what it is about the school that they’re looking to talk about in the interview. Then the last thing that we found with the guides and this goes back to last year which is the first year we launched them, was that people buy them quite a bit in the spring when they are trying to make decisions about which program they want to attend. So they have a list of offers, ideally because they’ve been successful in the admissions process and they are trying to figure out where should I go so they might use the career section of the school guides in which we compare regional placement, industry placement across all of the leading schools so they can get a lot of really good data in order to kind of hone in on what program might be appropriate for them.”

The Forte Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes women business leaders. The foundation is made up of a consortium of business schools and leading companies that have joined together to address concerns that women have in business and business education. Forte organizes what they call Forte Forums, an event for potential MBA students. I recently visited one in New York City and had the opportunity to speak with Elissa Sangster, Forte Foundation’s Executive Director. “The Forte Forum starts tonight at 5:30 with open tables for women to go by and visit with different schools, it will be followed by an alumni panel of women who are out there who have their MBA sharing their experiences. Then we’ll also have an admissions workshop where some of our school sponsors will share kind of their insights on to the admissions process.”

Now you guys are traveling the country and it’s the same type of event in each city? “Right, we do a series of ten events across the United States and then we have one in London. These forums, they’re set up so you can come and learn from the women who’ve been there before you. So you can ask questions of MBA women who have made the investment, they’ve gone through the program and they’re now working in different industries, very diverse groups of industries from entrepreneurs to financial analyst to senior women, more junior women, giving them the perspective that they need to say ‘Hmmm that’s something that I’d be interested in. I’m glad I heard from her because that’s something that also interests me.’ We found it really helps women to have a path laid out before them to say here’s someone who’s gone before and done it. So don’t be concerned about your ability to be successful along that path. They also get to meet one on one with the admissions professionals at each schools and that gives them the one on one time that they need to get all of their questions answered that are specifically related to the questions women ask, I guess. Often times different things come up when you’re with an all female group. But the admissions workshop, the one-on-one with the schools all of those put together to kind of address the things that we’ve seen that women need.”

Which schools are actually coming today? “We have 32 sponsoring schools of Forte and all of them should be attendance this evening and we also have some local MBA programs who may or may not be Forte sponsoring schools. Then we also have some test prep providers that will also be exhibiting offering programs for increasing your GMAT score and testing for the GMAT, things like that.”

How can someone make the most of this event? Should they do research prior to coming? “I don’t think it’s necessary to do research prior to showing up, I think it really can be exploratory. If there’s someone who’s just thinking about it, I absolutely encourage them to be here because they’ll learn a lot, they’ll meet women who are amazing, just the attendees are amazing, just chatting with the people who are sitting next to you in audience can be inspiring and I think listening to the women panelists and speaking to the admissions directors, if you’re even questioning whether business school might or might not be the right choice it be great to come and see what it’s all about. But then on the other hand if you’re ready to apply I would come with some research done, with some specific questions to ask, more so for the admissions directors than the panelists but it’s great place to do that and the numbers should be in the line that you should be able to talk with as many as you want to talk with.”

Does the Forte Foundation offer any other resources for women going to business school? “We do offer scholarships for women attending MBA programs; those are given out through our sponsoring schools. Each school awards two fellowships each year at the least and they’re usually around $20,000 US per year so they are significant fellowships in support of these women attending their business school. Beyond that Forte then takes that group of women and then we have what we call MBA Fellows and there’s about 120 women in each class who are considered Fellows and that’s across all of the business schools that sponsor Forte. We do a number of things, podcasts, we have a conference for them, we’ve done an MBA trek in the past to New York City. So there’s all kind of things that we have done for those fellows. This year we’re going to be opening up our conference to all women attending Forte sponsored schools so that will be in June and women can come and participate in the professional development programs and also a career fair.”

How would someone apply to those scholarships? “The scholarships are given out through the schools through the regular admissions process. So depending on which school you’re attending you just indicate that you’re interested in a fellowship and that you’d like the Forte Fellowship if it is available and then it is a competitive scholarship based on merit.”

We hope you’ve enjoyed this addition of MBA Podcaster. For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA Podcast visit mbapodcaster.com. I’m Janet Nakano for MBA Podcaster. Be sure to listen next time on another topic to help you succeed in your MBA application process and life beyond. Thanks for joining us.