Haas Adds Leadership Course to Core Curriculum

UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has added a leadership assessment course to its core curriculum.

Starting this fall, first-year MBA students will use the course to conduct a “360-degree review” of their leadership style and skills, drawing on self-assessments, reviews from former supervisors, co-workers, and clients, and feedback from fellow students.

The purpose of the course is to help students understand how others see them as leaders and managers and to improve their leadership performance based on those insights. Faculty designed the course partly on the basis of their experience teaching executives at the London Business School and in the EMBA program at Haas.

Source: "Haas School of Business Adds New Leadership Course to MBA Core Curriculum," press release, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business (Berkeley, CA), October 26, 2006

Profile of Stanford's Class of 2008

The Stanford Graduate School of Business has provided this statistical profile of its most recent full-time MBA class:

Applications received: 4,868

Entering class size: 379
Women: 32%
Minority: 17%
International: 37%
Average work experience: 4 years
Average GMAT: 720 (ranges from 530 to 800)

Previous work experience in:
Consumer products (manufacturing & service): 25%
Investment management: 21%
Consulting: 19%
High-tech: 11%
Government: 8%

Undergraduate degrees in:
Humanities and social sciences: 43%
Engineering/mathematics/natural sciences: 36%
Business: 21%

Jack Welch Shares Insights with Sloan Students

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch began teaching an 8-week-long course for MBA students at MIT's Sloan School of Management this week. The course, called "Conversations with Jack Welch," is meant to give its approximately 30 students a chance to learn about leadership and management from Welch's insights and experience.

The lessons that Welch has shared with students so far include:

- Beware of becoming overly committed to your employees. When you employ a large number of people, some of them are bound to be poor performers who should be fired.

- Don't invest large amounts of time or money in trying to help low-performing employees. Some people are simply in the wrong job. It's better for the company and the employee to help them move on to a more appropriate position.

- Having a single senior employee serve as mentor to someone younger is a bad idea because the senior person "may be a turkey." It's wiser to have young employees work with a variety of more senior staff.

- You should open negotiations by making your objectives and goals clear at the start. Your bluntness will put your opponent off-balance, and you will save time that would otherwise be used jockeying for position.

Source: "MIT Gives Welch Lectern to Air Opinions," by Mark Jewell, Associated Press (Boston), October 14, 2006.

Recruiters Woo MBA Students with Time-Sensitive Bonuses

Competition for top MBA talent is so keen that some companies have started to use 'time-sensitive' signing bonuses to try to win high-performing students early in their second year of classes.

The New York Times reports that companies like Mercer Management Consulting, Microsoft, and Kraft are offering the incentive bonuses, usually to students who performed well in summer internships.

Typically, the bonuses are worth their full value -- which is reported to range up to $45,000 -- only if the student accepts a job offer by a set date. The bonuses either decline in value or are withdrawn if the student misses that deadline.

Certain schools, including Harvard Business School, do not allow companies to make incentive bonuses to their students, saying that the practice puts too much pressure on students to commit to an employer too early in their final year.

The NYT notes that October has typically marked the peak of on-campus MBA recruiting activity. This year, however, a number of schools are finding that many of their students had already accepted job offers by that time. Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, for example, says that approximately 4 out of 5 of its second-year MBA students received a job offer from their summer internship employer.

Source: "Clock Ticks, Bonus Ebbs for Recruits," by Louise Story, the New York Times, October 13, 2006.

BWeek and The Economist Release 2006 Rankings

Both BusinessWeek and The Economist released their 2006 b-school rankings this week. The top 10 schools from each list are:

BusinessWeek's ranking of the top US b-schools:

1. Chicago GSB


2. Wharton


3. Kellogg


4. Harvard


5. Ross (U. of Michigan)


6. Stanford


7. Sloan (MIT)


8. Haas (UC Berkeley)


9. Fuqua (Duke)


10. Columbia

The Economist's list of the top b-schools worldwide:

1. IESE (Spain)


2. Tuck


3. Stanford GSB


4. Chicago GSB


5. IMD (Switzerland)


6. Kellogg


7. Harvard


8. NYU - Stern


9. The University of Michigan – Ross (US)


10. UC Berkeley – Haas (US)

Harvard Round I Deadline Extended by 24 Hours

Due to technical problems with its website, the Harvard Business School has extended its deadline for Round I applications by one day.

Round I applications must now be submitted no later than 5 p.m. (1700 hours) EST on Thursday, October 12.

The HBS website has been offline for much of today, meaning some applicants were unable to access the link to the application website.

Numbers Aren't Enough to Get You Into Wharton

Do you think your strong undergrad GPA, stellar GMAT score, and solid job history are enough to get you into Wharton?

Think again.

According to Wharton's admissions office, between 75 and 80 per cent of its annual pool of MBA applicants are eligible for admission on the basis of academic and professional experience.

That means that academic and work accomplishments alone are not enough to make an applicant stand out from the rest of the applicant pool -- or to persuade the admissions committee that a particular applicant is right for Wharton.

What does make a difference in individual applicants' outcomes?

According to Wharton's admissions office, it is personal qualities such as leadership, initiative, communication skills, managerial talent, integrity, and a commitment to the community.

And where does the admissions committee look for evidence of these qualities?

In the applicant's letters of recommendation, their overall application package -- and in their essays.

For more on this, read "MBA Admissions Essential #3: Look Beyond the Numbers," posted October 5, 2006 to Wharton's MBA Admissions Blog!