MBA admissions consultants

The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth—aka Tuck—is located in the quaint town of Hanover, New Hampshire. Hanover has a population of only approximately 20,000 and is thus considered a small college town, but “Tuckies,” as the school’s students are known, have no shortage of access to global learning opportunities. Students gain hands-on international experience through the “Tuck Global Consultancy” course, which gives second-year students the chance to put their education into practice worldwide. Since 1997, students in this course have consulted with more than 90 global organizations on more than 135 projects in more than 45 countries. On-site consulting projects are led by small teams of students working under the supervision of Tuck professors with extensive consulting backgrounds. A high percentage of the second-year class participates in this elective, and at the end of the program, students present their findings to their clients from around the globe.

Yesterday, Manhattan GMAT posted a GMAT question on our blog. Today, they have followed up with the answer:

First, figure out how many possible five-digit codes there are in general. Since there are ten digits (0 through 9) and five different positions, the number of possible codes is 10 × 10 × 10 × 10 × 10, or 105 = 100,000.

Now, what must be true about five-digit codes that could be interpreted correctly either way (left to right or right to left)? These codes must be palindromes—they must be the same forward and backwards. If you represent each digit with a letter, then the code must be of the form xyzyx. The first and last digits must be the same (x), and the second and fourth digits must be the same (y). The middle digit can be anything.

Since you now only can determine three digits independently, you only have 10 × 10 × 10, or 103 = 1,000 possible palindromic codes.

The chance of choosing such a code at random is 1,000/100,000, or 1/100.

The correct answer is B.

mbaMission is proud to introduce a first-of-its-kind MBA application writing class led by veteran mbaMission admissions consultant Angela Guido. Throughout this four-session, 12-hour course, we will guide you step-by-step through the process of creating a compelling MBA application that reveals your unique character and will inspire the admissions committee to grant you that coveted letter of acceptance. This class is designed to jump-start your application process—you will brainstorm for unique ideas, practice the techniques of effective storytelling and resume construction and learn how to structure and draft essays for your target school—so that you are headed in the right direction with all your applications.

Expected Outcomes

In this class you will accomplish the following:

• Understand how to view essays through the lens of the admissions committee
• Learn to identify the characteristics of a great essay and avoid common pitfalls
• Dig deep into your past experiences to reveal your most compelling stories
• Start constructing your essays with feedback and direction from your peers and the instructor
• Benefit from the workshop leader’s deep expertise on the admissions process and top programs
• Workshop your essays in an online session after the formal instruction sessions to enhance your drafts and move your work toward the final draft stage
• Get a head start on your recommendations and interviews in an extra hour of recorded content and develop a process for completing the rest of your applications

Class Dates:

Online Winter A:

• Sunday, Feb. 19 (10 a.m.—1 p.m.)
• Sunday, Feb. 19 (2—5 p.m.)
• Tuesday, Feb. 21 (8—11 p.m.)
• Tuesday, Feb. 28 (8—11 p.m.)

Online Winter B:

• Sunday, Mar. 11 (10 a.m.—1 p.m.)
• Sunday, Mar. 11 (2—5 p.m.)
• Tuesday, Mar. 13 (8—11 p.m.)
• Tuesday, Mar. 20 (8—11 p.m.)

*All times listed are in Eastern Time Zone

Fees:

Online Winter A: Regularly $699, but register before February 12 to receive a 10% early bird discount!
Online Winter B: Regularly $699, but register before March 4 to receive a 10% early bird discount!

Space is limited. Visit www.mbamission.com to sign up today!

When you select an MBA program, you are not just choosing your learning environment, but are also committing to becoming part of a community. Each Thursday, we offer a window into life “beyond the MBA classroom” at a top business school.

April 2011 marked the 11th annual Tuck GIVES (Grants to Interns and Volunteers for the Environment and Society) auction, a student-led event that raises money to fund salaries for Tuck students who accept internships with nonprofits. The event includes both a silent auction and a live auction. According to Tuck’s admissions blog, students dress up for the event in their fanciest attire and watch two of their classmates lead the auction of donated items. These offerings can range from dinners with faculty (such as a Cajun-style group dinner cooked by Dean Paul Danos and a South African group dinner hosted by a professor) to vacations (including a vacation package at a luxury resort in Bermuda and a trip to a ski resort in Colorado) to student-hosted themed dinners, tickets to Red Sox games, tennis and fly-fishing lessons, babysitting services and a day-long workout session with Tuckies from the Armed Forces.

About the auctions, a member of the admissions staff told mbaMission, “Our goal is maximum participation of the Tuck community, which includes students, their partners, staff and faculty. I have donated two necklaces and bracelets that I made from African beads I purchased in Ghana, one of the deans auctions off an evening in his barn, which is actually a huge, wonderfully furnished place with a giant TV and bar, and other folks offer dinners, photography, painting and just all sorts of things.” The April 2010 Tuck GIVES auction raised more than $51,000.

For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at Dartmouth Tuck and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Each week Manhattan GMAT posts a GMAT question on our blog and follows up with the answer the next day. Are you up for the challenge?

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose an MBA program to attend, but the educational experience itself is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we profile George Geis at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

George T. Geis (“Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation”) has been voted Outstanding Teacher of the Year four times while at Anderson and currently serves as faculty director of the school’s Executive Mergers and Acquisitions Program. Geis is also the editor of a Web site that provides analysis of mergers and acquisitions deals in technology, media, and communications (www.trivergence.com) and writes a mergers and acquisitions blog (http://maprofessor.blogspot.com). One recent alumnus described him to mbaMission as an experienced investor and a funny and credible guy. He added that he had very much enjoyed the guest speakers Geis brought to class, as well as the strategic analysis of the board game industry, covered in a case discussion about the game Trivial Pursuit.

For more information about the UCLA Anderson School of Management and 15 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

For many candidates, Round 3 is a time to sit back, relax and wait for the MBA admissions committees to make their decisions. However, for others, this round is a time to be conservative and apply to a safety school. But what constitutes a safety school?

Although determining exactly what a safety school is can be difficult (given that many variables are involved and the definition can shift depending on each candidate), a good place to start is with scores. If a candidate’s GMAT score and GPA are significantly higher than the target school’s averages, then the school is—at first glance, at least—a “safe” choice. So, for example, if you have a 720 GMAT and a 3.8 GPA and you are applying to Emory’s Goizueta School (average GMAT 680 and GPA 3.3), you are off to a promising start.

Next, you might consider your work experience relative to the target program. For example, many Goldman Sachs investment banking “alums” apply to and are admitted to the so-called M7 schools (Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago, Columbia and MIT). So if you happen to be such a candidate, choosing a school outside this tier would certainly make you more competitive (keeping in mind scores, community service and recommendations as well).

Finally, you might consider the general selectivity of the program. If you consider yourself a competitive candidate at Columbia Business School, which accepts 16% of applicants, applying to Texas, which accepts 34%, may be a safe option.

Before you start applying to any safety schools, however, you should ask yourself this relatively simple question: “Would I go if I got in?” Spending time applying to an MBA program that you would not be willing to actually attend is pointless. If you choose to apply to such a school (as some do), anyway, you will, rather ironically, find yourself with no “safety” net at all.

The Financial Times published its 2012 ranking of MBA programs over the weekend, with some notable changes in the lineup. For one, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which tied for fourth place with INSEAD last year, came out on top for the first time. Harvard Business School was ranked second, while last year’s joint number one, the Wharton School, came in third. These rankings are based on information gathered through two surveys—one of 2008 MBA graduates and one of 150 participating business schools—that look at salary, diversity of teaching staff, board members and students, international reach and the relative number of articles published by full-time faculty in academic and practitioner journals. A key difference in the Financial Times ranking versus other popular rankings, such as those by U.S. News & World Report or BloombergBusinessweek, is that the FT ranks U.S. and international business schools together, giving a more global perspective.

As we always mention when reporting on MBA rankings, business school applicants should take any ranking system with a grain of salt. Rankings simplify that which cannot be simplified and assign a numeric value to that which cannot be quantified. Rather than focusing on a school’s ranking (or change in ranking from year to year or from publication to publication), you should take time to determine the factors that are most important to you in an MBA program (e.g., pedagogy, academic/professional specializations, location, class size), and then do your research to identify the schools that best meet your needs by fulfilling these factors…not arbitrary ones like rankings.

For more information about how to assess rankings within the context of choosing the right business school for you, download our free Selecting Your Target MBA Program E-Book.