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Cranfield MBA Ranks Best in World for Economics
When it comes to economics, the Cranfield School of Management’s MBA program is ranked first in the world, according to the new Financial Times 2017 full-time Global MBA ranking. The Cranfield MBA rankings were based on the views of Cranfield’s alumni, which Professor Joe Nellis said made it even more valuable. “The fact that this section of the ranking is based on the views of our alumni makes it even more significant,” he commented in a press release.
Part of the reason for Cranfield’s outstanding economics ranking is the School’s Economics group, which has been around since 1994 and is considered a foundation of the MBA program. Professor Nellis, who heads the group, said, “We live in a truly global world and at Cranfield we have always prided ourselves in making sure that we give our students the best possible education when it comes to understanding the global economy. We are privileged to have some exceptional faculty from around the world who really bring the issues to life for our students.” Continue reading…
Terry Women’s Initiative Named ‘Innovation that Inspires’ by AACSB
The University of Georgia – Terry College of Business‘ women’s initiative was recently honored by AACSB International as an “innovation that inspires.”
What Do You Need To Know When It Comes To Group MBA Interviews?
The goalposts for group MBA interviews are constantly shifting. For years, we at MetroMBA and Clear Admit, as well as other provincial publications, have been dishing out valuable advice for how to prepare for it. And for those familiar, one of the key points to remember is constantly being familiar with the changes.
LBS Employment Report Finds Grads Falling Out Of Love With Finance
London Business School MBA graduates may be seeing higher salaries and increased hiring rates, but its love of the finance industry may be waning.
According to the 2016 London Business School employment report, MBA grads are joining the financial sector at the lowest rate in five years. LBS grads are still joining the industry at 25 percent overall, which trails the 35 percent of graduates that enter consulting. Technology, which hired the third-most LBS 2016 graduates, came in third at 21 percent—the same percentage from the previous year.
via London Business School Employment Report 2016
Goldman Sachs, which typically hires the most LBS MBAs that move into the financial sector, only hired six employees from the 2016 class, down from nine the previous year. Credit Suisse and Citi Bank also hired less grads than the previous year. This all comes despite the fact that the aforementioned companies hired several more total summer interns, but did not retain them. For instance, Goldman Sachs took in 13 interns but only hired six employees—creating a retainment rate of only 46 percent.
Another marked difference is the slightly noticeable decline in finance hires joining private equity firms rather than traditional investment banks. 2016 marked the first year—ever—that more joined private firms, with nine percent of graduates compared to seven percent joining investment banking. These figures fall in line with trends that have persisted since the financial collapse of 2008. eFinancialCareers debuted a report in September of 2016 that found a steadily declining love between MBAs and traditional big banking.
If you’re in London in particular, therefore, the MBA-into-banking route has pretty much disappeared in 2016. Banks’ recruiters say it’s the culmination of a long term trend. ‘This has been going on since 2008,’ says one, speaking off the record. ‘Once things got tough, MBAs just weren’t seen as value for money any more.’
Despite the dampening of the overall numbers, salary rates saw a noticeable bump for finance industry hires. The average annual salary of 2016 grads jumped from £78,358 to £81,905, with the highest max salary leaping from £125,468 to £151,469.
Consulting Hires Jump
The total percentage of LBS graduates joining the consulting industry jumped moderately from 33 percent in 2015 to 35 percent last year, with the majority of hires joining Boston Consulting Group (BCG), McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Company. BCG specifically saw hires nearly double over the course of a year, improving from 19 to 34 total.
Like the financial sector LBS hires, salaries increased across the board for consulting industry MBAs. The average annual salary of those in the industry leaped from £79,773 to £83,268, although the highest salary tracked was £117,389—down from £121,824 in 2015.
The Incoming LBS MBA Class
A total of 411 new students will join LBS in 2017, ranging from 24 to 39 years of age. They enter the MBA program with an average of five years of professional work experience and a 701 GMAT score (up from 699 last year). As well, there is a moderate increase in female students and diversified nationalities. Accepted female applicants jumped to 37 percent from 36 percent, and 68 total nationalities are represented, up from 65 in 2015.
You can read the entire LBS 2016 employment report here.
Canadian Business Schools Struggle in Latest Financial Times MBA Rankings
The newest batch of rankings from the Financial Times has been revealed, and the results aren’t very encouraging if you’re a Canadian business school. In fact, only three schools out of Canada’s 22 Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) accredited schools made the 2017 ranking of the world’s best full-time MBA programs. Continue reading…
DeGroote MBAs Shine at Case Competitions
There’s no doubt that case competitions are a vital part of the MBA experience. Not only do they help students gain valuable real-world experience, but they also help expand business acumen, develop creative thinking and prepare students for their future careers. And at McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, their track record at international and national case competitions has been exceptional. Continue reading…
Hot MBA Jobs: International Business Consultant
International business consulting is one of the world’s fastest growing industries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the hiring rate of management consulting (the overarching job category) is increasing much faster than average, with an expected rate improving around 14 percent until 2024.
And there’s no doubt that the international side is growing even more quickly due to the globalization of the world economy, the emergence of new markets and explosive economic growth in countries such as India and China. Not to mention the fact that the world is smaller than ever and that almost every business across the world conducts business internationally—even many small and medium-sized companies. So, as more and more companies embrace the global mindset, international business consultants will be more valuable than ever.
As for MBAs, consulting is still one of the most sought-after career fields. According to the 2015 Prospective Student Survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), consulting topped the list of intended industries for both millennial and Gen X respondents (41 percent and 27 percent respectively).
But before you make the decision to become an international business consultant, let’s take a look at what your career would look like. Continue reading…
Joint Rutgers-Mendoza Program Lands on Value Colleges List
The Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick, New Jersey recently announced announcing that its joint Mini-MBA in Digital Marketing and Digital Marketing Certificate Program with University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business were included in Value Colleges 2017 list of ‘Top 30 Best Value Digital Marketing Certificate Programs.’
The Top Toronto Marketing MBA Programs
According to the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is one of North America’s fastest-growing economic regions. The metropolitan area covers more than 7,000 square kilometers and consists of 25 municipalities and four regions with a total population of over 6 million. Toronto features a workforce of about 2.9 million people, more than 100,000 companies, and a gross domestic product of U.S $109 billion. All of this adds up to Toronto being Canada’s undisputed business and manufacturing capital. Continue reading…
Looking For Consulting And Strategic Management MBAs in Atlanta
As a prospective MBA, you probably already know that while an MBA degree provides students with a strong business foundation, many programs also offer students the chance to specialize their education. For students who have a sense of the career path they would like to pursue after earning their degree, earning consulting and strategic management MBAs can provide a competitive edge in the job market.
Students looking to pursue a career in strategic planning may find it useful to earn a specialized MBA with a focus on strategic or organizational management. Given the role of a strategic consultant—helping a company to grow and plan for the future through the consultant’s expertise and analysis—gaining direct experience in consulting and strategic management can be an important step in preparing to enter the field.
Students looking in Atlanta will find a number of schools offering consulting and strategic management MBAs. With these programs, students can still obtain the strong foundation of business knowledge that comes with an MBA degree, while simultaneously strengthening the specific skills needed for a career in strategic management.
We’ve rounded up some of the top Consulting And Strategic Management MBA programs in Atlanta below.
Goizueta Business School – Emory University
The two-year MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School allows students to concentrate their degree in a number of fields, including Strategy Consulting. With a combination of business fundamentals and elective courses, the Goizueta MBA allows students to truly create their own educational experience without forsaking the development of a strong business foundation.
Below are just a few of the recent electives offered for students in the Strategy Consulting concentration at Goizueta:
- Financial Statement Analysis
- Marketing Intelligence & Customer Insights
- Corporate Governance & Firm Value
- Consumer Behavior
- Negotiations
- Strategic Decision/Analysis
- Marketing Channel Strategy & B2B
- Forecasting & Predictive Analysis
J. Mack Robinson College of Business – Georgia State University
The Robinson College of Business at GSU offers an MBA in Organization Management through the Department of Managerial Sciences. The Department has a number of faculty members within the field of Strategy Management, who work with students at all levels of education, from undergraduate students to Ph.D. candidates and everything in between. The faculty work to help students “develop their understanding of how competitive advantage is created in firms, and the decision processes, analytical frameworks and organizational systems and structures that support the creation and maintenance of advantage.”
Below are just a few of the electives offered as part of the Organization Management elective:
- Problem Solving
- Consulting Practice and Theory
- Management Studies Abroad
- Comparative Business Systems
- Organizing to Compete
Scheller College of Business – Georgia Institute of Technology
The Scheller College of Business at GIT offers students the chance to earn an MBA in Strategy & Innovation as part of the full-time MBA program. The program focuses on developing each student’s understanding of how an organization gains and sustains competitive advantage. The program also aims to show the natural intersection between innovation and strategy.
The Strategy & Innovation MBA at Scheller centers around two core courses in Managerial Economics and Strategic Management, along with several elective courses for students to choose from, such as:
- Venture Creation
- Technology Strategy
- Current Thinking in Strategy
- Qualitative Research for Business
- Managerial Economics and Strategic Behavior
Terry College of Business – University of Georgia
UGA’s Terry College of Business offers an MBA with an emphasis in consulting, one of the most popular career paths for Terry graduates. The consulting emphasis at Terry employs both an interdisciplinary and experiential approach, combining classroom experience with hands-on, project based learning. The program develops student’s skills in a variety of areas, building the necessary analytical and practical skills for a consultant to effectively improve their client’s operations. Terry graduates in consulting have gone on to work in management consulting roles at top companies like Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, KPMG and more.
Terry MBA students in consulting have two required courses in Competitive Strategy and a practicum in Innovative Business Projects. Several additional electives are available, including:
- Economics of Management Organizations
- Critical Design Thinking
- Marketing Analytics and Decision-Making
- Business Process Management
The Best Seattle Entrepreneurship MBA Programs
MBAs who have or are seeking careers centered upon entrepreneurship have countless options. Those who are looking for just the right place to live, learn and work might do well to remember that Seattle entrepreneurship MBA programs are some of the country’s most innovative.
Starbucks, Amazon, and yes, that other great behemoth, Microsoft, were all born from the ambition of of young business people with no shortage of creativity, and a love for a thriving community of like-minded people.
A Look Inside McCombs Latest MBA Employment Report
Many students pursue an MBA with one goal—to improve their career opportunities. Whether you’re leveraging an MBA to transition into a different industry or to move up within your current company, it’s important to get a return on your academic investment. So, how do you know if a particular MBA program is going to advance your progress toward your career goals? Reviewing a school’s MBA employment report is one of the best ways to assess a school’s potential to get you where you want to be.
Every year, MBA programs carefully track where their graduates head after earning their MBAs. These stats, which include salary details, top hiring firms and popular industries and job functions, provide a detailed overview of the job outcomes of their most recent MBA graduates. If reviewed carefully, these reports can give you a good sense of how well a particular MBA program will be in helping you land your dream job.
Recently, the McCombs School of Business released its 2016 Full-Time MBA Employment Statistics. We spoke to Stacey Rudnick, the Director of MBA Career Management at McCombs, to get her perspective on which statistics are most important for prospective students to consider and what trends stood out this past year. Continue reading…
Startup Lessons: Impulse Analytics
The path for startups can be treacherous. In our series “Startup Lessons,” we examine new MBA startups at the ground level to understand how they succeed.
The Best Philly Part-Time MBA Programs
Are you a small business owner stuck in a rut? Or a headhunter looking for a leg up? In Philadelphia, more and more working professionals are exploring business school as a path to get ahead in their lives and careers. To help, check out MetroMBA’s guide to the best Philly part-time MBA programs.
The Best Boston Global MBA Programs
Boston may be a well-known hub for education in the U.S., but it’s also a center for global business studies. Global MBA programs are similar to executive MBA model, which usually meet on weekends and cater to students who are mid-career professionals, but focus on conducting business in international settings. A global EMBA targets students with 10 to 15 years of experience and allows students to learn while immersed in other cultures.
MBA students have a number of Boston Global MBA programs and concentrations to choose from. Below is a breakdown of the various offerings you can find in the metro: Continue reading…
Top 5 MBA Interview Questions
Interviews, interviews, interviews … it’s all anyone seems to be talking about these days, and with good reason. Harvard Business School, Michigan Ross and Chicago Booth have already sent out their Round 1 interview invitations. Stanford GSB starts rolling out invites this week and UPenn/Wharton is also scheduled to release all its invites this week.
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 the Clear Admit Interview Guides and Interview Archive to compile our very own Top Five MBA Interview Questions list of the questions that most often make their way into MBA admissions interviews at leading schools.
While these refer primarily to questions asked as part of blind interviews, they can certainly also come up as part 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 Clear Admit’s 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.
Top Five MBA Interview Questions
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.
This article has been republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
MBA Insider: Wharton FinTech
It’s the year of FinTech—at least according to The Market Mogul. While the concept of FinTech has been around for more than fifty years, only in the last decade has it really begun to emerge as a prominent industry. Now, FinTech is everywhere, and more and more startups and technologies are popping across the U.S. than ever before. Continue reading…
UCLA Anderson and the Entertainment Industry: Inseparable
Los Angeles is often called the “Creative Capital of the World,” and it’s no wonder since one in every six residents of the city works in a creative industry. In fact, there are more artists, writers, filmmakers, actors, dancers and musicians living and working in LA than any other city at any time in history. So it makes sense that the UCLA Anderson School of Management offers programs for students interested in working in the entertainment industry. Continue reading…
