This was a great report from the B school Penn Forums last August, the info is still right on and valuable.

_____________________________

Hey Sandy,

Here is my report on the 3^rd “Annual Keys to the MBA Admissions Process Panel” event that took place on August 7.  The event was organized by alums of PennNYC club and sponsored by Kaplan Test Prep.  With panelists of AdCom directors from HBS, Wharton, Stanford, MIT and Kellogg, the evening was well-attended, with about 1,000 applicants gathering in the spacious air-conditioned room at the Grand Hyatt hotel in NYC.

Some of

The event was scheduled with a welcome discussion from 7:00 to 8:30 PM, and a networking information exchange till about 9:30 PM.  The welcome discussion was moderated by a feisty female President of PennNYC, who was not afraid to ask direct questions, such as “what would you recommend if the applicant was your own kid?”  To which Derrick responded “I have to look around the room to see if any of these people ARE my kids” after pausing.  Another funny moment was when

I spoke with Derrick during the network session, and found him genuine, attentive, and smart.  He also wore a nice suit and smelled nice… The students said you’ll see Derrick a lot if you get admitted, so a good reason to apply to Stanford!  J

The event was organized around 5 topics: Academics/GMAT, Experience, Essays, Extra-Curricular, and Interviews.  When asked to share thoughts on Extra-Curricular, Angel Navedo of MIT, a really cool guy I thought, said he wasn’t very busy in high school, but had a 4 page report of high-school activities when he was applying to college.  He naturally advised the applicants against employing this strategy, but pretty much said that MIT doesn’t care if you were that involved, and will not hold it against you, especially if you are in Finance working long hours.  That really inspired my interest in applying to MIT – think I have a chance there!!! J  The MIT desk during the networking session was represented by current students, who were all very friendly and eager to share their enthusiasm for the school, emphasizing that the MBA program is not as technical as one might incorrectly assume based on school’s brand.  MIT should thank Angel and the kids for doing a great job at marketing and re-branding. 

I was not AT ALL impressed with Beth Flye from Kellogg, who kept repeating “Know Yourself” no matter what question she was asked – thanks Beth, that is REALLY HELPFUL!   I think she would benefit from

cheers…

Sandy’s devoted girl-fan in NYC

THIS IS POST FROM  A FRIEND WHO ATTENDED THE HBS ADMISSIONS FORUM IN NEW YORK CITY  RECENTLY

Had the opportunity to attend [HBS ADCOM DIRECTOR DEE LEOPOLD’S]  talk yesterday in NYC.  Here’s something to solidify your Age Jihad theory: 

Dee:  “We encourage you to apply with 2-3 years of experience.  We are becoming a younger class”

Here are some stats for you
- 8,600 applications for class entering in 2008
- 1,800 interviewed
- 12 Seniors out of college are joining HBS this fall
- 25 people work in admissions
- 12 full time, rest are brought on to read applications during the application season

GOOG AND GS IS WHERE THE GRADS WANT TO BE–BELOW, STORY FR. THE ALWAYS SHARP DEALBOOK COLUMN OF THE NEW YORK TIMES.

for complete list, in Fortune.com,  well, click here

M.B.A’s Still Love Google and Goldman

May 27, 2008, 1:48 pm The New York Times

• Business school graduates are getting ready to hit the work force — if they are lucky — and it seems that nearly a quarter of them want to work for Google.

For the second year in a row, an annual survey of the most desirable places for an M.B.A. graduate to work, compiled by Fortune.com and Universum, found that Google appears more often than any other potential employer as the place business school students would like to hang their diploma — putting the Web search giant above bulge-bracket investment banks and the top-tier consulting firms.

Google expanded its lead in 2008, with nearly 24 percent of survey respondents saying that they would love to be on the payroll at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, up from 20 percent in last year’s survey. McKinsey and Company, which held the top spot in 2006, came in a distant second in 2008, with only 16 percent of respondents naming the consulting company as one of their five favorites.

The investment banks that ranked the highest in this year’s survey are generally the ones that have best weathered the subprime meltdown. Goldman Sachs came in third overall — the same position as in 2007 — and took the top spot as the most desirable bank for a new graduate to start his or her career. JPMorgan Chase ranked No. 10, jumping 11 spots from last year, passing rivals such as Morgan Stanley (No. 15), Lehman Bothers (No. 16) and Merrill Lynch (No. 18).

Citigroup and Bank of America saw their rankings tumble. Citi fell 10 slots to rank No. 21 overall, while Bank of America fell 14 slots to No. 24.

Scary article in Business Week about what uber-focused frosh and others are doing to lock down elite banking and consulting internships as part of their mastet plan to gain admission to Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School, and Wharton School of Business.

Once, merely graduating from an Ivy League college or similarly prestigious rival like Stanford or Swarthmore qualified students for a choice entry-level perch on Wall Street. No longer. “The whole idea of smart people just falling into banking is becoming rarer,” says Lance LaVergne, a vice-president and global head of diversity recruiting at Goldman Sachs (GS). “Clubs are essential to preparation, especially for students who are not majoring in traditional disciplines like finance or accounting.”

GRE ADDS PROF RECS TO COMPETE WITH GMAT: COMMENTATORS GIGGLE, BUT HARD TO SAY WHO IS RIGHT.

hmmmmmmmm, first the news: fr. INSIDE HIGHER ED. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/22/etsThe GRE [will be ]  using the “Personal Potential Index,” starting in July 2009.  . . . .In the index, three or four professors or supervisors — generally those who will also be writing letters of recommendation — will answer a series of questions . . .in  six areas: knowledge and creativity, communication skills, team work, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity. Those filling out the forms would also be able to provide narrative answers on each of those areas. . . .

ETS officials acknowledge that the PPI is part of their pitch to attract more business schools to the GRE — a major goal of ETS, and one on which it appears to be making some headway, since it lost the contract for the Graduate Management Admission Test.

AND NOW THE PEANUT GALLERY RESPONDS TO NEW GRE PPI STUNT -AND I GOTTA SAY, AS SOMEONE WHO READS A LOT OF B SCHOOL RECS, AND, AHEM, OFTEN EDITS  THEM, THOSE BOXES WITH THE RANKINGS, FR. SUPER-DUPER TO ROAD KILL, ARE THE LEAST VALUABLE AND MOST ARBITRARY PARTS, BUT THAT IS WHAT SEEMINGLY THIS NEW PPI INDEX WILL ENTAIL.  PEE-PEE ON PPI ANYONE???? SOME BLOGGERS APPARENTLY HAVE, SEE BELOW

Idiotic

This is a harebrained solution to a problem that may not exist. As anyone who has ever reviewed applications or written a letter of recommendation knows, the “ranking” questions used by some institutions’ recommendation forms are nearly useless. One professor’s 5 is another’s 3. I’m not a statistician, but I do know that in a small survey sample, there is no way to control for such variations. Besides, many professors refuse to answer those questions or just give high scores across the board, showing resistance to the whole concept of crude rankings of abilities. Students already submit faculty letters that give narratives of their cognitive and non-cognitive skills. I don’t see any way ETS’s numbers will improve the evaluation process. Just read the letters if you want to get to know an applicant’s personality.

J. Staines, Assistant Professor at CUNY, at 7:40 am EDT on May 22, 2008

Rate My Student

Oh, goody, finally: a chance for professors to fill out bubble sheets on our students, en masse, rating them on unquantifiable things about which we are unprepared and perhaps unqualified to judge them and which may or may not predict their long-term success as learners, such as their potential, their attitude, their joyousness in learning, and whether they made us feel professorial and beloved. All’s right with the world, at last.

Is there anyone here who hasn’t ever looked at one of those recommendation-sheet grids — “rate this student as Top 1%, Top 5%, Top 10%, or Really Pathetic in the following categories” — and found themselves sorely tempted to inflate the score for a student who’s merely *likeable* or one who has “struggled” in some way, whether or not we think he or she has the intellectual prowess being measured? Anyone who hasn’t looked at such a category — Personal Devotedness, say, or Experiential Acumen — and thought, “Geez, I only read a couple of her exams, how the hay am I supposed to judge her on this?”

If the student is likely to be better than her scores predict, she deserves a full narrative testifying to that fact; if a graduate program wants to find the best candidates rather than the best test-takers, they should demand and attend to evidence beyond GRE scores. Any attempt to take a short-cut will bring short-cut returns, and the test-makers will be the only ones who come out ahead.

ezry, at 7:55 am EDT on May 22, 2008

This is evil

This totally kills the point of the GRE. You want to get something anonymous that shows how people compare on a completely objective — even if flawed — measure. Now we’re going to see all cultural biases get doubled. Look, professors already write qualitative recommendations. They already give qualitative grades. This is makes it look scientific, but it’s not.

Predictions: Good looking students get higher scores.

Uncreative suckups will get higher scores than independent creative minded students.

Students of different ethnicity, gender, sexuality or faith than recommenders get lower scores.

Sexual and financial scandals will occur with professors receiving gifts in exchange for scores.

Professor grades will rapidly converge to say that every student is perfect.

urbanprof, at 8:35 am EDT on May 22, 2008

This was sent to me on my Business Week thread by a helpful dude:

——————

I just spent some time compiling this list of where the blue chip PE/LBO firms recruit, based on the top 7 schools’ latest employment reports - enjoy!

Apax Partners - HBS, Wharton, Columbia
Apollo - HBS, Wharton
Bain Capital - HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago
Blackstone - HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Sloan
Carlyle Group - HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Sloan
Cerberus - HBS
Clayton Dubilier - Columbia
ESL - HBS
Fortress - HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Sloan
GTCR / Thoma Cressey - HBS, Stanford, Chicago
HIG Capital - HBS, Wharton, Chicago
JH Whitney - HBS
KKR - HBS, Stanford, Wharton
Madison Dearborn - HBS, Wharton, Chicago
Permira - HBS, Wharton
Ripplewood - HBS, Sloan
TH Lee - Wharton, Stanford, Chicago
TPG - HBS, Stanford
Warburg Pincus - HBS, Stanford
Welsh Carson - Stanford

TECHIES, HAVE YOU BEEN DINGED AT HBS????? There is a way in, and they will pay you to do it.

below, an interview w. HBS’s IT Head [CIO] and what he looks for when hiring. Forget the leadership BS, just be nice. By the way, one area these dudes do not seem too involved in is admissions since THAT is largely outsourced to MisApplyYourself, the folks who keep your precious data under SUPER DUPER security, ahem, like their last leak several years ago. I believe this fellow below  may be giving HRH Leopold blogging tips, however, altho as they say, you can lead an adcom to water, but you cannot make her blog.

(more…)

HBS has published its new questions, see below & note the revised calendar for due dates –if you applying round one, the app. is due on October 15th. MY ADVICE FOR ANSWERING THESE QUESTIONS IS GIVEN IN NEXT POST
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/writtenapplication.html

Essays:

1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
3. Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
   1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
   2. Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.
   3. What area of the world are you most curious about and why?
   4. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

Amazingly, for the first time I can recall, there is no DEFINING LEADERSHIP QUESTION, which used to be the HBS calling card, not sure if this was oversight, or boredom, or what, but I always found that question to be pretty helpful way to separate the four-star restaurants fr. the happy meals.  Of course,  to the extent you have a defining LEADERSHIP exp. in a volunteer org, you can use it for that question. AND I STRONGLY SUGGESST THAT–WHICH MEANS YOU GO BACK TO OLD SCHOOL AND COME UP W. FOUR KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS [3 for Sig Accomplishments, and one defining Community Service accomplishment] + then do VISION. My guess is, that will be the most common template: e.g. the two optional questions will be Comm Service (aka Defining Leadership) and Vision.

OK, on a question by question basis: my take on the new optional questions are

Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):

What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?

hmmmmmm, hard to get value add out of this unless you use it as an invitation to tell your life story: e.g I arrived at Dopey University [1. after being in US only two years; 2. as stary eyed pre-med student w. my doctor mom and dad monitoring my every quiz, 3. dead set on making sure that George W. Bush would never serve a third term, then I found out he couldn’t anyway, so I became a comic video maker ……………] where you fill in the family background of your story, to the extent that has not happened before in essays about mistake or accomplishments. Then you build off that to introduce growth or signature issues in your app/lofe. You dont have to write about ‘academic’ exp. per se, even tho the question says that, THEY DONT CARE, TRUST ME, they just want to find out what makes you tick, not how well you technically answer their questions. Sooooooooo, this question could be good for someone who has an interesting life story to tell, in addition to having 3 sig. accomplishments outside college. Or someone who had major shift in college away fr. pre-med towards micro lending etc. and why. I would NOT use this essay to discuss BORING drivel like how come, based on the arcane requirements of your major and distr. requriements in your department, you had to take course 1 2 and 3, and why those grades were B+ and not A, so actually gpa in your major SHOULD be 3.72 and not 3.59 etc. Altho MANY DO THAT, seriously. There is part in app. often question 13, where you can concisely (500 characters) discuss drivel like that.

Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.

Note it says a community or organization, –so you can, I imagine, talk about being a guru in the Grand Theft Auto 4 community, even tho there is no organization per se, just a bunch of wingnuts in a discussion group, where you have become respected as the master blaster (hmmmmmmmm, this is beginning to sound like me on this Forum), but as a rule HBS really does like ORGANIZATIONS w. names, tax-exempt status, hierarchy, and boards of directors (ahem, to take one example, HBS itself) where they can see you working and thru others, making an impact, standing up for your ideas, etc, etc. or even over the course of 3 years, having a defining leadership experience. THIS IS A GOOD QUESTION TO ANSWER IF YOU GOT THE GOODS AND SHOW IMPACT, GROWTH, PUBLIC SERVICE, BLAH BLAH

What area of the world are you most curious about and why?

Dudes, don’t answer this question unless your interest is based on solid contacts and accommplishments, this is not a trivia game, or contest to see whose passport has the most stampls. My guess is, this will be the least answered optional question,and WITH GOOD REASON. If you have a solid interest someplace, you can probl. do better working that into Career Vision, and why meaningful, and tell us in a more concrete way why you plan to become the Charles Schwab of China (or Central Asia) b.c. of emerging trends in that area where middle class are beginning to invest, etc. or why you plan to start low cost medical treatment centers in Indian Villages, blah blah, you’d do better working w.in framework of career vision. IMHO.

What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

Hmmmmmmmm, folks, this is an obvious question to answer, but guess what, THE VAST MAJORITY OF ACCEPTED KIDS LAST YEAR ALSO ANSWERED THIS QUESTION AS AN OPTION, AND DUH, THEY GOT ACCEPTED. SO DON’T DOUBLE THINK THIS, ANSWER IT. UNLESS YOU GOT A POWERFUL REASON TO WORK W. OTHER QUESITONS. There are lots of ways to skin this cat, but lemme give you a tip: dont talk about WHY HBS, that is just wasted verbiage. Kids got in last year who did that, but it was because of other things in their apps, the why HBS part never moved the ball forward one inch. A way better answer is to announce some goal that makes sense given your background and positioning, sound like you know what you are talking about, refer to others in the field, and then personalize WHY SIGINIFICANT based on your drives, experiences, hopes, calling etc. etc. 

IF YOU WANT TO MEET ME IN PERSON, COME TO THIS EVENT, IT’S ALWAYS FESTIVE AND INFORMATIVE.  

Getting Into a Top MBA Program  Panel Discussion with Top B-School Alums

http://www.netsapboston.org/events/2008/mba08.html

NetSAP Boston invites you to join us for a tightly packed panel discussion on getting into a top business program!

Our panelists are Alumni from Top BSchools such as HBS, University of Houston, Sloan and Northeastern. They will share their experiences and give you insight into the focus areas at top business schools (Executive & Full-time programs) which will help you identify areas from your own experience that you can highlight in your application. Know your career options after an MBA and how an MBA can change your life.

We also have, Sandy Kreisberg, a frequently cited business school admissions expert who has assisted hundreds of applicants be placed at schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and Sloan. He will provide you with the tone, sensibility, and ethos that each school looks for in an essay.

• Sandy Kreisberg, Founder, Cambridge Essay Services
• Andrew Menter, CEO, Highland Campus Health; Alum University of Houston
• Tushneem Dharmagadda, IP Design, Analog Devices; High Tech MBA Program, Northeastern University
• Panelist from Princeton Review, TBA
• Getting Your MBA? Should You Fork Out the Big Bucks?
• Getting Your MBA - Part Deux
• MBAs ROCKIN EVERYWHERE!!!

Where: Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge
20th Floor, 111 Huntington Avenue,
Boston, MA 02118
 
When: Thursday, May 15th
 
Time and
agenda: 6:30 ? 7:00PM Registration and Networking
7:00 ? 8:30PM Panel Discussion
8:30 ? 9:00PM Informal Q&A and Networking
 
Cost: NetSAP Members: $5
Non-Members: $20     (Sign up for Membership to get discounts)
SABA GB Members: $5     (Please read below to sign up)
Price includes dinner & drinks
 
Registration: