Georgetown McDonough MBA Admissions Answers 5 Questions
In our latest installment of the MetroMBA “5 Questions” series, we speak with Shelly Heinrich, Associate Dean, MBA Admissions and Director of Marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. She was kind enough to respond to our questions and share insight into what it’s like to attend McDonough for an MBA.
1. How does Georgetown McDonough help MBA students pursue their special interests?
Shelly Heinrich, Associate Dean, MBA Admissions and Director of Marketing
“One of the reasons Georgetown McDonough stands out is because our students have diverse industry interest areas. We are not a school that places half in consulting and half in finance. While these certainly are the largest areas our students pursue, close to 53 percent are seeking careers in the following industries: technology, consumer products, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, nonprofit/social impact, real estate, and government. Technology, in particular, is our third highest career placement industry.
Another way students can pursue special interests is with our customizable curriculum. After students in our full-time and Flex MBA complete their core, they can choose from over 100 electives and don’t have to declare a concentration. We believe this is key because every job requires people to wear multiple hats and have multiple skill sets. So, if we were a school that forced students into certain classes, they wouldn’t be able to build a skill set that addresses the multiple knowledge gaps they are seeking to fill.
Additionally, MBA students can leverage the rest of Georgetown University, taking up to 12 credit hours of electives at another Georgetown graduate program or even 6 of those 12 credit hours at partner institutions in the DC metro area.”
2. What makes Georgetown McDonough a special place for you?
Overlooking the Washington Monument, located just one mile away from the Georgetown University McDonough School of Business campus.
“I experienced what makes Georgetown McDonough special even prior to starting to work here over four years ago. I’ve been living in the DC area for over ten years now and have worked at four other business schools. Throughout my professional and personal life, anytime I engaged with someone who worked, taught, or went to school at Georgetown McDonough, their eyes lit up or ‘sparked’ when talking about their experience. They spoke about their time as if they wanted to be back on campus, reliving their experience. When I received the offer to work here, a former staff member of McDonough reached out to me with congratulations and encouragement and said, ‘I loved my time there. It’s such a special place, and you’re going to love it.’
From day one, I have understood the spark. We have a phenomenal community. Students are high caliber, love their community, and embody the Jesuit values of men and women in service to others. Faculty and staff are committed to the continued growth of the program, and the evidence of this is our continued rise in rankings, the profiles of our incoming students, and our employment results. Also, our alumni are committed to giving back and helping fellow Hoyas.
Four years later, I still love coming to work every day. The buzz and energy of the Hariri building is invigorating and I am always excited to celebrate the weekly or even daily accomplishments of our community.”
3. What does your ideal MBA candidate look like?
“Our ideal candidate has executive presence, grit, diverse personal and professional life experiences, a global mindset, and a generosity of spirit. We want students who will come to Georgetown McDonough and leave a mark, finding their niche in the student community and leaving a legacy that will be experienced by future cohorts and classes.
But, to answer the question that your readers are likely looking for, we certainly look for students with a class profile similar to our recent incoming class. These are students with a strong academic background, professional and personal experiences that can add value to the classroom conversation, and a strong commitment to understanding and appreciating a diverse classroom experience. Our incoming Full-time and Evening MBA class represented over 40 countries and 17 industry backgrounds. The ideal candidate comes in wanting to learn from all the various backgrounds of students.”
4. Are there any new program, centers, faculty members, or events you can talk about?
“The Flex MBA program—the next evolution of our Evening MBA—will start in fall 2019. This program retains the strong assets of our highly ranked part-time MBA program while infusing newly added areas of flexibility.
We will retain an identical curriculum and degree as our full-time MBA and access to the same cohort format. The new aspects of the program include a Saturday elective and hybrid elective options, in addition to the current evening elective offerings. Hybrid electives allow for a mix of on-campus and virtual sessions to provide flexibility to students who may travel for work or who need options to commute less to campus. Additionally, there will be additional opportunities to take our Intensive Learning Experiences, which are 1-2 week intense electives where you complete an entire elective on a host of special topics in a condensed amount of time. Finally, we’re now allowing students to transfer electives of graduate coursework if they have not been counted toward another graduate degree.
We’ve seen strong interest in this program and look forward to the inaugural cohort next fall.
We recently launched a new Certificate in Consumer Analytics and Insights that provides students the opportunity to understand how consumers make decisions via the analysis of consumer data. For students wanting to hone their analytic skills, this is a very relevant certificate. Additionally, the HoyAlytics, student data analytics club is celebrating its one-year anniversary and has provided students with workshops in such programs as Tableau, R, SAS, and Excel.
Working with others across the university, Georgetown McDonough has launched a program to transform the lives of a highly select group of District residents released from local correctional facilities who show strong potential to become successful leaders and role models in their communities.
Through a combination of education and partnership with local employers, the university’s new Pivot Program aims to prepare participants for positions as both entrepreneurial leaders and productive employees.
The Pivot Program represents a collaboration among Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative, Georgetown College, and the McDonough School of Business, with the support from the Mayor’s Office on Returning Citizen Affairs and a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development agency. In addition, the D.C. Department of Employment Services will provide stipends to our participants.
Georgetown designed the Pivot Program to break that cycle and recapture this untapped human capital. This transition program offers a non-credit-bearing certificate in business and entrepreneurship designed specifically for a cohort of up to 20 returning citizens, to be known as Pivot Fellows.”
5. What’s your favorite DC parade/event that every student should attend?
“I love the Embassy Open House Weekends in May; there are usually two consecutive weekends. Most embassies open their doors for a weekend of food, dancing, and cultural activities specific to their country. You can walk from embassy to embassy for an entire day of cultural immersion. It is something unique to D.C. that you wouldn’t get anywhere in the world. We have over 177 embassies in D.C. which is representative of what a global city we are.
Additionally, every student has to watch the 4th of July fireworks on the National Mall at least once while here. It is truly an U.S. American tradition and patriotic experience. Hot dogs, music, blankets, picnic baskets, and red, white, and blue.”
Investing In U.S. Innovation, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The 1 Thing Your Company Should Add To Its Retirement Benefits – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan Professor Lotte Bailyn took part in a three-year research study under HBS Professor of Business Administration Teresa Amabile to understand the “organizational, social, and psychological forces that can affect people’s retirement experiences.”
Bailyn outlined two strategies to help “pre- and early-retirement individuals manage their transition out of the workforce”:
- The “Phase-down” strategy enables a “retiring employee to work less while receiving a percentage of their pay, plus benefits. At the end of the phase-down — which can range from months to a handful of years —the person retires.”
- The “Contracted rehire” strategy allows companies to hire back employees on a contractual basis, which Bailyn explains, “allowed the company to get the specific niche knowledge that that person has, and by working with other people, employees in the organization could pass on that knowledge.”
Questrom School of Business Professor of Management Tim Hall, one of the researchers on the study, adds, “It’s surprising how little employing organizations are doing to help them [transition]— even though at the same time they’re interested in maybe helping people move on and opening up opportunities for younger people, they’re not. I think there’s a great opportunity cost they’re suffering by not doing that.”
You can find more information on the study here.
How the U.S. Can Rebuild Its Capacity to Innovate – Harvard Business Review
There is a growing trend of companies across all industries choosing to “invent and manufacture abroad” in what Harvard Business School’s Willy Shih describes as a loss of “industrial commons.” According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, “nearly half of the foreign R&D centers established in China now belong to U.S.-based companies.”
“Over recent decades, VCs have overwhelmingly focused on software and biotech investments over ‘hardware’ investments, closing additional doors to manufacturing innovations. It’s no wonder that so many promising manufacturing enterprises have to look abroad to simply get off the ground—let alone soar,” writes Sridhar Kota, Justin Talbot-Zorn, and Tom Mahoney.
The article recently outlines four principles the U.S. could use to reinvigorate its industrial ecosystems.
- Don’t Fear Picking Winners: “Rather than allowing promising R&D results to languish in labs or even be commercialized by foreign competitors, the U.S. should launch a National Innovation Foundation to invest in engineering and manufacturing R&D to mature emerging technologies and anchor their production onshore.”
- Invest in Hardware Startups and Scale-Ups: “U.S. policymakers can … build on existing resources to help innovative hardware startups and scale-ups succeed—particularly through domestic government procurement [the way] China has employed government procurement, strategic technology transfer, and domestic technology development to build its respected high-speed rail industry.”
- Mind the Mittelstand: Small and medium enterprises (SMMs) “amount to about 250,000 firms, or 98 percent of all manufacturing firms. By strengthening and supporting these firms, the U.S. could rebuild the backbone of its manufacturing sector.”
- Power to the People: “While American high schools typically require students to dissect a frog, few require students to disassemble a power tool. Exposure to real-world engineering is a crucial and cost-effective way to build interest in manufacturing careers—through either four-year engineering degrees or vocational training.”
You can find the entire HBR article on re-investing in American industry here.
Legacies Catching On – Carroll School News
BC Carroll School of Management Professor of Information Systems Gerald Kane recently put together a new research report as part of a gig guest editing the MIT Sloan Management Review’s Digital Business Initiative. The report, Coming of Age Digitally: Learning, Leadership, and Legacy, emphasizes the need for companies to foreground experimentation in their “digitally maturation” processes.
According to the Carroll School News, “Nimble businesses create the conditions for employees to take risks and try new things. The key to [prepare] for more digital disruption is to not simply hire but develop digital leaders.”
“Part of developing leaders means giving employees the time and space to acquire new skills, an area where many companies need to improve. Ninety percent of survey respondents said they need to update their digital skills at least yearly—and 44 percent said they need to do so ‘continually.’ Yet at ‘early-stage’ companies (which are paradoxically often the older companies), nearly 30 percent indicated that their employers offered little to no support to do so.”
You can read more about Kane’s research here.
The Future of Employment at Philly Business Schools
When considering where to get your MBA, one of the first questions you should ask is, “What will my employment outlook be?” After all, the reason you get an MBA is to improve your career. But what is important when it comes to employment trends at the leading business schools in Philadelphia? There are quite a few different statistics you should look at.
Important MBA Employment Statistics
To choose an MBA program based on your future career success, there are a few questions you need to answer.
- What industry do I want to work in and does the school place a majority of their students in that industry?
- What percentage of students receive and accept job offers? The same for internships?
- Self-employed or entrepreneurship data?
- What salary can I expect?
- Where do most students end up living and work?
- Who are the top employers?
You also want to look at any trends between years. For example, the percentage of students receiving job offers should increase year-over-year. And if you see a shift from the consulting industry to financial services, you want to be aware that the school could be changing its direction.
So, what does employment look like for three of the top Philly business schools?
The Wharton School
At the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the employment trends year-over-year are fairly consistent. While the percentage of students reporting job offers dropped from 2016 to 2017, part of that reason may be the increased number of students seeking employment (75.2 percent vs. 79.1 percent).
As for the increase in median salary, that can be attributed to inflation as well as an increase in job salary for each industry including professional services rising from $160,000 in 2016 to $180,000 in 2017. The location of jobs also changed slightly between 2016 and 2017, but that could be due to various reasons including the current state of international affairs for the U.S.
| The Wharton School | 2017 | 2016 |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage of students reporting job offers | 97.1 percent | 98.3 percent |
| Percentage of self-employed students or those starting their own business | 4.8 percent | 5.8 percent |
| Median Salary | $130,000 | $125,000 |
| Location Choices | 88.7 percent U.S. 11.3 percent International | 86.9 percent U.S. 13.1 percent International |
As for where MBA students at the Wharton School gain employment, there are a few important notes. The same top three industries—financial services, consulting, and technology—attracted students in both 2016 and 2017. However, the percentages were a little more evenly distributed in 2017. As for the companies hiring students, most of the same companies showed up each year.
| Top Three Industries | Percentage of Students (2017) | Percentage of Students (2016) | Companies Employing Two or More Students (2017) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Financial Services | 32.7 percent | 35.1 percent | Barclays, CITI, and HSBC |
| Consulting | 28.3 percent | 26.6 percent | A.T. Kearney, McKinsey & Company, and Boston Consulting Group |
| Technology | 16 percent | 12.6 percent | Adobe Systems, Amazon, and IBM |
Penn State Smeal College of Business
Pen State’s Smeal College of Business is consistent year-over-year in regards to its MBA employment trends. The percentage of student reporting and accepting job offers increased between 2016 and 2017 from 88.9 percent to 91.5 percent. However, the median salary stayed consistent at $105,000, and the hiring trend of most MBA students staying in the U.S. also remained the same.
| Penn State Smeal College of Business | 2017 | 2016 |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage of Students Reporting Job Offers | 91.5 percent | 88.9 percent |
| Median Salary | $105,000 | $105,000 |
| Location(s) | 98 percent U.S. 2 percent International | 96.5 percent U.S. 3.5 percent International |
As for where MBA students at Smeal College gain employment, there are a few important notes. While the same industries made the top four each year, where they placed changed. In 2016, the top industry was consulting (25 percent) while that changed to manufacturing in 2017 (20 percent). In 2017, retail also moved into tie consulting for the second most sought-after industry, while technology actually decreased year-over-year (23 percent vs. 15 percent).
| Top Four Industries | Percentage of Students (2017) | Percentage of Students (2016) | Companies Hiring |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consutling | 18.5 percent | 25 percent | Deloitte, EY, and PricewaterhouseCoopers |
| Technology | 15 percent | 23 percent | Amazon, Apple, and Dell |
| Manufacturing | 20 percent | 14 percent | Amphenol Corp, CHEP, International Inc. |
| Retail | 18.5 percent | 14 percent | Anheuser-Busch, Proctor & Gamble, and Johnson & Johnson |
Rutgers Business School, Camden
In 2017, the Financial Times ranked the Rutgers MBA as the best program for MBA employment across Big 10 schools. In 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek also ranked Rutgers as the best MBA program for job placement in the U.S. This indicates a relatively steady year-over-year employment trend for MBA students.
As for the median salary of a Rutgers MBA, students in 2017 could expect to earn $95,680. As for the most popular industries, they were:
- Pharmaceutical/Biotech/Healthcare: 46 percent
- Consulting: 13 percent
- Consumer Products: 13 percent
- Other: 14 percent
Stanford Develops Method to More Accurately Predict ER Wait Times
The fear of a sudden trip to the emergency room is all-encompassing, but scattered and incorrect waiting times can often make a bad situation even worse. The Stanford Graduate School of Business recently explored this unfortunate issue, finding ways to bridge the gap between the ER’s intention and execution.
Stanford Lecturer Talks Socioeconomic Impact of AI
Coursera co-founder, Baidu Research chief scientist and Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer Andrew Ng recently spoke at the the school’s MSx series about the socioeconomic impact artificial intelligence is slated to have in the coming decades.
Columbia Talks Future of Free Trade in Op-Ed
Columbia Business School recently published an op-ed from Peter Wiegand about the potential future of free trade after the 2016 presidential election wraps this November.
