MBA Tour San Francisco

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Update July 20th, 2009: This show is now live. Listen now and be sure to attend one of The MBA Tour's Upcoming Fairs
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I had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall at The MBA Tour's International Schools tour stop in San Francisco last evening at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency. Representatives from eight business schools from Europe, Latin America and Asia were on hand for informal, roundtable discussions with about a hundred prospective applicants. Each school visited each table, so I was able to hear every presentation and the follow-up Q&A.

How do some of these programs differ from MBA programs in the U.S.?

Several of them are intensive, one-year programs with January starts, putting you into your summer internship mid-program and coming back in the fall for your final semester. (The word on the street is, don't plan on much sightseeing! But on the other hand, what better way to experience a country than to study and work there?)

Most programs were small, with classes of 100 to 200, which school reps said allows for individualized study and career focus. All of the schools have a truly international student body, with larger percentages of international students than students from the host country. Instruction happens in English, with either requirement or opportunity to take language courses in the native language of the country in which you're studying.

Rick Rudolph, from the Rotterdam School of Management's Erasmus University, and Anna Farrus from Oxford's Said Business School both emphasized the value of a diverse student body, diverse in both their nationalities as well as their career interests and core beliefs. Rudolph talked about how learning with a truly international cohort forces you to more objectively examine your own assumptions and learned cultural biases. Farrus said Oxford actively seeks to create a student body of people from widely varied work backgrounds to stimulate lively and rich collaboration and debate, in and out of the classroom. Both mentioned the collaborative thrust of their MBA programs' cultures, as opposed to the sometimes highly competitive culture of some large North American business schools.

Michael Ji and his colleague Angela Qian of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Shanghai and Beijing gave a fascinating window into China's entrepreneurial environment.

Tune into MBA Podcaster in the coming weeks for my full podcast feature on the MBA International Schools Tour.

Avoiding Application Pitfalls: Accepted.com

What should an MBA applicant NOT do when preparing his or her application? That's the topic of my upcoming podcast. To get some answers, I've been talking with admissions consultants and admissions staff at some of the top business schools.

Linda Abraham, Founder and President of admissions consulting firm Accepted.com, helped get me started with her article on the top MBA application essay mistakes, "Recipe for Disaster: Application Mistakes You Want to Avoid."

Abraham said the biggest mistake applicants typically make is writing what they think the admissions committee wants to hear, instead of writing about what they want the admissions committee to know.

Read that again. Rinse. Repeat.

Ready for more? Like Graham Richmond of Clearadmit, Abraham described the application as the sum of many parts.

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle," she said. "All the pieces are going to come together to form a picture of the applicant. They shouldn't duplicate; they should complement."

That means getting those analytical gears spinning and applying them to yourself: your test scores. The essays. The boxes on the application form. The interviews. What points should go where? How can you put your best foot forward?

For more Application Pitfalls questions, and answers, tune into MBA Podcaster for the full story in the next month or so.

(Updated! Listen to the completed show here: http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/MBA-Application-Pitfalls.asp?iEpisode=83)

Avoiding Application Pitfalls: Fuqua

In researching my next MBA Podcaster segment (working title: Avoiding Application Pitfalls), I'm talking to several schools to get their take on the most common mistakes MBA applicants make during the application process. Liz Riley Hargrove, Associate Dean of Admissions at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, sees a LOT of applications. She manages the admissions process for all of Duke's MBA programs, from the regular daytime program to various Executive MBA programs.

Riley Hargrove said one of the most common mistakes she's seen applicants make in her years of reviewing applications is not allowing enough time for the entire application process. Application committees can tell if an application was rushed, Riley Hargrove said. She advises applicants to make sure you have enough time to prepare yourself academically, visit the schools you're applying to, write and revise your essays, and prepare yourself for interviews.

But how much time is enough time? Riley Hargrove said at a minimum, allow several months. "I'm always happy to see applicants who have given themselves at least a year lead time," she said.

And you thought the GMAT was your biggest hurdle!

Check back with MBA Podcaster in the next month or so for the full story.

(Updated! Listen to the completed show here: http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/MBA-Application-Pitfalls.asp?iEpisode=83)

Avoiding Application Pitfalls: ClearAdmit

I'm working on a story about the most common mistakes MBA applicants make on their applications, and how to avoid them. My first interviewee was Graham Richmond, CEO of Clearadmit, an admissions consulting and publications company that helps guide MBA applicants through the application process.

Richmond said the MBA application process is, "like a multivariable equation": a 360-degree process with a lot of moving parts. It's important to evaluate your entire application and make sure no single part is weaker than the rest. However, he said the most common, and debilitating, mistake applicants make is telling, rather than showing, on the application and in the essays. It sounds pretty basic, but it's a principle that applies to all the writing, and interviewing, parts of the application process.

"It's not enough to say you exercised leadership," Richmond said. "You need to provide specific examples, such as how many people you supervised, and or how you guided a team to achieve measurable results."

Richmond said another common error is that applicants forget who their audience is. "Assume the admissions committee doesn't know much about the field you've worked in," Richmond said. "It's easy for an applicant who's been immersed in their field for several years to assume knowledge on the part of readers, but that's dangerous."

Stop by MBA Podcaster in the next month or so to hear the podcast.

(Updated! Listen to the completed show here: http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/MBA-Application-Pitfalls.asp?iEpisode=83)

Take the MBA Search Survey & Win an iPod!

As an applicant to business school, you turn to us as a source of reliable information and valuable advice on the MBA admissions process. As a member of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants, we are conducting a survey to help us better understand our listeners’ goals and needs. We’d like to invite all of our listeners to share their school selection priorities and views on the MBA application process.

This online survey should take just 10 minutes to complete. We would love to receive as many responses as possible before the closing date of Friday, March 20th - and will be giving away an iPod Touch and two iPod Shuffles as a token of our gratitude!

Thanks in advance for your participation!

Simply click here to begin:
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