A good environmental reputation doesn't make the grade when it comes to rating a company as a prospective employer, a new study finds
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CHAT TRANSCRIPT
Chat Transcript: Vanderbilt MBA
MBA aspirants interested in Vanderbilt's Owen B-school asked questions of the admissions director and a first-year student. Here's a transcript of the online chat
MBA INSIDER: ADMISSIONS Q&A
The A to Z of Getting Into Columbia
Assistant Dean for Admissions Linda Meehan on the New York business school's procedures
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MBA INSIDER: A DAY IN THE LIFE
Finding Markets for Steel
A Rotterdam MBA describes her workday at the London offices of multinational steel company ArcelorMittal
Visit BW Online's interactive forums for wide-ranging discussions about management education. Search through over 1,359,000 posts for topics that interest you. Join in today! Here are a few samples of recent messages:
Getting into B-School: Essay Mistake
From: jeevanpendli
To: ALL
I have already submitted all my apps for MBA. However, I discovered yesterday that one of the essays for Kenan-Flagler had a small grammatical error. I put an "it" where an "its" was required. This error appears in second half of the essay, in the last line of a paragraph.
How seriously could this error impact my chances?
------------
From: YaleForSure
To: jeevanpendli
A single typo in your essay is acceptable; a single typo on your resume is unacceptable.
------------
From: IvyEngineer
To: jeevanpendli
It's been a while since I posted on this board, and I'm starting to realize why: everyone here is a bit nuts. Listen to the guys who got into schools for advice on how it works. I got into both Chi and W with a couple minor typos in each. Polished my Stan and Harvard apps, however, using my gf as a copy editor after realizing that I had made the earlier mistakes.
Double check your essays next time to make yourself feel better, but know that this will have absolutely no impact whatsoever on your chances of admission. Clear articulation of your goals, past performance, future potential, self-awareness, etc. are what the adcoms seem to be looking for, not typographical perfection.
I see a lot of people on this forum say that they are scoring within a certain range on a practice test...
What practice tests are you taking that give you a number equivalent? Any recommendations on where to find practice tests?
Also, for those who have taken the test, how comparable were your practice test scores to your actual scores?
------------
From: fchung81
To: TFA2MBA
Lots of third parties sell practice tests either on CD-ROM or online (Kaplan, Princeton Review, Manhattan GMAT). However, MBA.com offers two official GMATs for free download on their website. These two tests seem to be the closest indicator of true test day performance from my point of view.
------------
From: sonibubu
To: fchung81
GMATPrep is by far the best, but you can also Google "PowerPrep", which is the predecessor to GMATPrep from GMAC.
B-SCHOOL BLOGS
View over 4,500 blogs in our MBA Blogs community today! Share your journey, meet new friends, and expand your network. Connect with MBA students, applicants and alumni from Columbia, Kellogg, Notre Dame, and more! Become a blogger today! Here's an excerpt:
BYU MBA Program 2008: From Bachelor to a Wife and Kid
By Nick Hopkins (BYU MBA Class of 2008)
Comments: 0 Stars: 0
Well, I am back at school, and boy are things different. I went from living in a small apartment by myself playing Halo 3 online at 3am and eating Lucky Charms for dinner to living in a small apartment with my wife and child and NOT being able to do what I want. It is pretty crazy, but it is good to be living with my wife again, and my one month old son, even if he does keep me up all night. I realized that once you become a parent you don't sleep, you just take naps.
The hardest thing this semester has been making a decision on where I am going to work. I used to think when you had a job offer everything was easy and there [were] no problems because you have jobs lined up. Boy was I wrong, one of the hardest things to do was actually choosing between what job you want. It is hard, deciding where you want to move your family, what company you think is best for you and your future. I made a hard decision and said no to one of the companies I had an offer from. It took a lot of thinking and praying, and it is hard because you always look back, but you can't, you just got to go forward.
So, you would think things are easy now, but I still have [to] make a decision on what I am going to do by this Friday. I thought by December 31st everything would be ready and I could finally start looking at houses, but no, here it is, January 13th, and I still have no idea where I am going to end up. I guess I should thank BYU that it is a good program and I am getting these offers, but it is still pretty hard. We are leaning towards Phoenix, but we will see. Who knows where I will drag my family to.
School has been kind of nuts the first week because I am constantly forgetting what classrooms I am going to. At least it is my last semester so I have some nice easy classes like Basketball and Tennis, but I am getting a Strategy and International Business minor, so I still have a heavy load. I have a field study with a company sending DVD's down to Latin America, so hopefully we can come up with a reason to have to make a trip down there, especially Argentina, to check it out. That would be awesome, and isn't that what field studies are all about, travel?
Since it has only been the first week of school there is not much going on school wise, but trying to make a decision between my offers has been work enough. Like I said, I guess I should just be happy BYU has given me the education I need to get so many offers, but it is hard, because a person is always scared they are turning down the wrong company. You just have to go for it though, and hope things go well.
MBAs Answer: "How important are time management skills in B-school?"
-------------------------------------------
For managing properly your time you need to know yourself enough so that you do not have the very unpleasant feeling of being overwhelmed all the time. Plan windows of pure extra curricular activities during the day in order to get greater incentive to get the work done before enjoying some rest. The MBA is just a rehearsal of the professional life. As well as I had to stay awake all night long to finish a strategy paper, I had to go home from work at 3a.m because a credit committee was taking place early the same morning and I needed to be ready. -Southern Methodist University (Cox) '98; Consultant
"What time management advice would you offer to B-schoolers?" Pretty darn important. But again, it's all up to what you are willing to sacrifice. B-school is all about too much work for one person and lots of team effort. You won't be able to read everything so you're going to know how to ignore the peripheral stuff and focus on the highlights. -Stanford '92; Director of MBA Admissions/Higher Education
As for first-year, it's a matter of keeping your head above the water -- forget time management -- you just keep working until you have to get some sleep. A lot of the things you'd like/want to do fly out the window, but it's important to keep things in perspective. How much further behind will you really be if you take an hour out to go for a run or grab a movie? Second-year relaxes a bit, so it's easier to stay balanced. -Dartmouth (Tuck) '99; Consultant
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Is it a glass half empty or half full? That seems to be the question raised by this week's lead story, "Green Isn't Gold for MBAs."
After all this talk about how "green" and "socially responsible" the current crop of MBA students are - a new study finds that students are placing these factors at the bottom of the list when deciding where they want to work. That's the glass half empty part.
On the other hand, this study of MBAs at a dozen top-ranked business school did find that just over a third ranked a company's environmental or green policies as keenly important factors in selecting an employer. But the fact that they're taking it into account at all is a positive - the glass half full.
We'll be looking to see a similar study done five years from now, when the current generation of undergrads are making their way though their MBAs. Then we'll know whether all this green talk is a fad - or a real change in the way managers view business.
Until next week,
Phil Mintz
B-Schools Channel Editor
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