Business school deans and educational thought leaders are doing a lot of soul-searching concerning the role and culpability of graduate business schools in the economic downturn. Dean Robert Bruner of Darden on April 5 wrote on Twitter “Controversy over the role of B-schools in the crisis. Did they warn strongly enough about the risks of toxic…
International GMAT Test Takers Score Higher than Americans
U.S. GMAT test-takers are performing poorly compared to test-takers from Asia-Pacific reports a recent Wall Street Journal article. In response to this growing performance gap, adcom at U.S. schools are seeking to implement new evaluation metrics to make domestic students appear better. Here’s an example of how things have changed: For the quant section, in…
Top Feeder Schools to Big Law
Wondering which law school will lead you to that coveted Big Law job? Well, the WSJ Law Blog broke it down for you using newly released data from the ABA. This data involved employment summary reports for individual schools, revealing that only about 8% of 2011 grads found jobs at big law firms. Plus, “schools…
Does Interview Prep Make You Phony?
I was thrilled Thursday to be quoted in The Wall Street Journal’s “Frankly, Wharton Wants Candor,” which focused on Wharton’s Team Based Discussion (TBD) and Harvard’s interview reflections. I disagree, however, with disingenuous arguments in the article that applicants who seek to prepare beyond a school’s recommendation are intrinsically less than genuine. I sat in…
NYU Stern’s Isser Gallogly: Finance from an Admissions Perspective
Part of an ongoing series “MBA in Finance: Forget It?” My question: Given the weakness in investment banking, hedge funds, and financial services in general, how do you react to applicants who say they want an MBA to enter IB, PE or a related field that has been devastated by the economic downturn? Is the…
Ivy League Edge?
The Wall St. Journal reports on a survey conducted by Payscale.com showing that the college one attends “can make a big difference in starting pay, and that difference is largely sustained into midcareer.” Personally, I would like to see this study conducted so that it removes the impact of SAT and high school GPA. Are…
Law Admissions: Look at the job market
According to Law.com "All together, the top 20 law schools that NLJ 250 law firms relied on most to fill their first-year associate ranks sent 54.9 percent of their graduates to those firms, compared with 51.6 percent in 2006." Obviously that does not mean that the remaining 55.1 percent were all unemployed, but if you…
Admissions Tip from Dr. Pausch’s Last Lecture (Part 1)
The Wall St. Journal has twice highlighted Dr. Randy Pausch’s moving last lecture. Both Good Morning America and the CBS Evening News featured Dr. Pausch and his tour de force lecture. While there are profound lessons for living in his lecture, as he intended, this blog focuses on admissions. I want to highlight just a…
Employment News for Grads
There have been a few fascinating articles this week focused on job opportunities for recent graduates of college and various graduate programs. Here is a brief run-down: "Best Places to Launch a Career" is a BusinessWeek Special Report surveying hiring trends for Generation Y and "ranking" the best employers. Included are pieces about the Big…
Q&A with Tuck Dean Paul Danos
This Q&A represents a distillation of an hour-long meeting I had with Dr. Paul Danos, Dean of the Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth. If you want to understand Tuck’s values, culture, and goals, read it (long post). Tuck’s MBA program is at the top of all the major business school rankings, including BW,…
Good Hiring News for College and Law School Grads
Lots of good news for grads this year. Hiring is up and salaries are up. First from the Wall St. Journal comes "For Class of ’07, Lots of Job Offers." A few highlights: Employers intend to hire 17% more graduates from the class of 2007 than they hired from the class of 2006. Salaries are…
Changing Associates’ World
CollegeJournal again has posted an excellent article on the changing interaction between associates and the large law firms that hire associates for big bucks and long hours. Once again the story focuses on increasing dissatisfaction and attrition: "The rate of associate attrition we’re seeing today at big firms is the highest level we’ve ever seen,"…
California Bar Bites
Law school is only a prelude to legal practice for most pre-laws. And on the way is the bar exam, a hurdle that has to be surmounted. The Wall St. Journal reports today that California’s bar frequently bars the way to legal practice, or at least causes even the talented to stumble. According to today’s…
Parents Tucking in College Students?
The Wall St. Journal has a great article today on (some) parents’ changing view of their role as children start to leave the nest: Follow the baby birds. See “Tucking the Kids In — In the Dorm: Colleges Ward Off Overinvolved Parents.”
“These are really good essays!”
As a result of my being quoted in that front-page Wall St. Journal article yesterday, (OK. OK. I’m milking it.) I received a call from a client I worked with in 1996-97. We haven’t spoken in several years, and it was great hearing from him. We worked closely on his application, and he was accepted to several schools,…
