Monday 14 July 2014

Preview your GMAT scores now !!

Taken from the GMAT official site (mba.com)

Prospective business students taking the GMAT exam will now be able to preview their unofficial scores before deciding whether to report or cancel them. This score reporting feature is available to all test takers at all 600 test centers around the world that administer the GMAT exam.

As a test taker, you are given the option of reporting or canceling your scores immediately after taking the test and before leaving the test center. Under the new process, you will see your unofficial scores — Integrated Reasoning, Quantitative, Verbal, and Total — and will be given two minutes to decide whether to accept them. If you do not make a choice, your scores will be canceled.

In addition, if you decide to cancel your scores at the test center, you will be able to reinstate them within 60 days of the test date for a $100 fee. After that, scores will not be retrievable.

To get the most out of this new feature, we recommend that you:

Know what score you're willing to accept so that when asked whether you wish to send your scores or cancel them, you have already considered your answer. Understand that you have 60 days to reinstate a score you might have canceled but decide later that you want to send. Analytical Writing Assessment scores are unaffected by the change. They are not included on unofficial score reports available immediately but are reported on official score reports delivered within 20 days.

Here's why a JD/MBA may not be the right thing

Taken from U.S News 01-Oct-2012

5 reasons :

1. Cost : Most JD/MBA programs are four years long and cost at least $50,000 more than a law degree alone.

In addition to the cost of tuition and living expenses, you also have the opportunity cost of the income you will forego during this program. Since JD/MBA programs sometimes require summer classes as well, you have even less opportunity to supplement your income.

2. Time : Going to business or law school means taking a two- to three-year break from the working world. Gaining a dual degree such as a JD/MBA often means even more time out of the workforce (though there are now three-year JD/MBA programs offered at schools including Columbia University, Yale University, and Indiana University).

3. Challenging curriculum : Law school is notoriously challenging, and often business school is equally as demanding. As a result, dual degree programs that pack extra classes into your schedule make good grades even more difficult to attain.

Since your grades in law and/or business school will likely be a deciding factor in your job search after graduation, if you are pursuing a dual degree, you must not let your grades suffer at either school.

4. Admissions competition : Both law school admissions and business school admissions committees can be slightly skeptical of applicants to dual-degree programs. They want students who are committed to their disciplines, not students who are simply hoping to add on another degree while they are at the school.

Overcoming this skepticism is a key part of the work I do when advising JD/MBA applicants on admissions strategy. The admissions committees' wariness makes the application process significantly more competitive, since at most schools you need to be separately admitted to both the law and business school.

5. Career imperative : Almost no job absolutely requires a JD/MBA. You should only pursue this dual degree if you know that both the JD and the MBA will be essential for your career path (though the two degrees may be relevant in different ways or at different times throughout your career).

For example, if you are positive you want to practice law throughout your career in a law firm, an MBA may not be as useful—unless you want to focus in corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, or bankruptcy, where an MBA could be very valuable.

If you are unsure of your future career path, gaining a JD/MBA just to "cover all your bases" may also not be the best investment. Take the time to first consider your future and what educational background you will really need to accomplish your goals.

Sunday 13 July 2014

MBA market faces winds of change

Taken from Financial Times 26-Jan-2014

When Ariwoola Ogbemi decided she wanted to study for a top-notch MBA a decade ago, she ruled out the two-year US model because she had a young family and could not spare the time.

“I knew two years wouldn’t work,” says the former head of the information technology department at Statoil Nigeria, the energy company. Instead, in 2003, she began the one-year MBA at IMD in Switzerland – a course she chose for its international focus as well as its duration.Ogbemi is typical of a growing number of business school students who, because of the cost, time commitment or career trajectory, are eschewing the traditional two-year MBA model for one-year, part-time or executive programmes, or shorter specialised masters degrees in finance or accounting.

Enthusiasm for the MBA is greater than at any time since 2008, but the two-year MBA, though still the gold standard of the business school world, is coming under increasing pressure as the market for business credentials fragments.

Even those who opt for a traditional MBA no longer see the degree as the traditional route into a career in investment banking or management consulting.

The impetus for change is coming from students themselves, says Rich Lyons, dean of the Haas school at the University of California, Berkeley. “You look at 200 MBAs and you get 200 different job aspirations. It is a good thing that schools are accommodating graduate needs.”

here is no better illustration of this than at Harvard Business School, where in 2013 just 5 per cent of graduates took up a job in investment banking – half the number of those who went into venture capital, private equity or leveraged buyouts. What is more, at $150,000, the starting salaries for those in the latter three sectors were 50 per cent higher than those in investment banking.

In 2013, salaries offered to graduates from the top-ranked schools showed a marked improvement. For the first time, those reported by European schools began to close on those reported from the US.

At Harvard Business School – traditionally one of the chart-toppers for post-MBA salaries – the median starting salary for 2013 graduates was $120,000, not including sign-on or other bonuses.

At London Business School, the mean starting salary was just below $114,000 in 2013, and just 29 per cent of LBS students went into finance, compared with 42 per cent in 2006.

Fiona Sandford, executive director of global business and careers at London Business School, says the big story is the growth in corporate sectors such as media and telecoms.

“The perceived wisdom is that if you rely on the corporate sector, you wouldn’t get the pay,” she says. “That is not the case.”

As with all the top US schools, LBS’s MBA is a two-year programme, a format that has staunch defenders, in particular because of the summer internship. At the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, more than 50 per cent of MBAs are there to switch careers, says dean Tom Robertson. “You need the summer internship for career switchers,” he says. This did not worry Ogbemi, who is now managing director of Statoil Nigeria. She discarded the idea of an internship because she knew she wanted to return to the oil and gas sector.

“Oil and gas is such a big part of the Nigerian economy,” she says, adding that for her the one-year format was “just ideal”. Though the one-year MBA started life in Europe, the model is growing in significance in India, says Ashish Nanda, recently appointed director of IIMA – the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad – the highest-ranked of three Indian business schools in the FT MBA rankings in 2014. He says the one-year course will gain in recognition and will be more attractive for overseas students than a two-year degree.

It has taken half a century for the one-year degree to establish its credibility, but a more contemporary threat is the advance of online technology, which has enabled online courses to be offered at lower cost or even free of charge.

The top business schools are leading the charge. Wharton, for example, has put several of its core courses online, but they do not constitute a degree, insists Prof Robertson. “It is not the total experience of the MBA; it is not the total course,” he says.

He describes the move as a “great experiment” that could ring changes to the campus-based full-time MBA. “Faculty are working potentially to incorporate it in the flipped-classroom model,” he explains. In this scenario students would study online but then participate in classroom analysis and discussion. “It is felt it could lead to greater depth,” Prof Robertson says. Meanwhile, there is an increased focus in the curriculum on entrepreneurship, with demand coming from today’s MBA students – the so-called millennials – as well as recruiters in large companies and start-ups, says William Boulding, dean of the Fuqua school at Duke University, North Carolina.

“What has changed in a very fundamental way is that big companies want to hire people who are entrepreneurial, who see opportunities in a competitive landscape,” he says. Entrepreneurship, adds Prof Robertson, is the “new leadership”.

Saturday 12 July 2014

Popular Choice - Studying abroad

Taken from TOI 19-May-2014

It is estimated that almost two thirds of India's gross domestic product (GDP) comes from family businesses. Little wonder then, the majority of Indian students go abroad to study business and commerce-related subjects. At the Master's level, an MBA is by far the most popular option. The degree offers specialisations in a number of subjects including marketing, finance and accounts, human resource management, strategy, operations and logistics and general management.

Thanks to the tremendous growth in the online business space, e-commerce, hitherto an unconventional specialisation, seems to be gaining momentum among Indian students. Of course, the majority of students yet opt for finance as a specialisation as the job prospects in this field continue to be attractive.