Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will haveis what 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 focus onPeter L. Rodriguez from the University of Virginia (UVA) Darden School of Business.
Peter L. Rodriguez is an expert in the areas of international business, trade, and economic development, with a focus on corruption. He has used his PhD in economics from Princeton University to study investing—co-editing the book Angel Investing in Latin America (Darden Business Publishing, 2005)—and he is currently Darden’s senior associate dean for degree programs and chief diversity officer as well as an associate professor of business administration.
In 2009, Rodriguez received an award for outstanding teaching at Darden, and in 2007, he won the school’s John Colley Award, which recognizes those who perpetuate Darden’s tradition of close interactions between professors and students. He has written several cases for Darden on topics ranging from the recent economic difficulties in the United States, to financial challenges emerging in Vietnam, to the effects of corruption and the economic impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Because of his personal interest in business developments in Latin America and Africa, Rodriguez has both planned and participated in Global Business Experiences (courses in which students travel to countries outside the United States to explore the culture and business environment there firsthand for several weeks) taking place in those areas.
Students with whom we spoke view Rodriguez, known to many as simply “P-Rod,” as a very caring professor who pays special attention to each student, asking about their families and remembering their concerns. One second year told us Rodriguez is “one of the most loved professors [at Darden].” And an alumnus with whom we spoke described him as “very funny, very articulate, not dry” but added that “he asks tough questions.” This graduate also noted that Rodriguez is very patient with students, helping each to probe deeply for answers and thereby guiding them to deeper insights. “He fills the room with kinetic energy when he walks in,” said an alumna we interviewed. “He understands who gets it and who doesn’t.”
With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense.
In Part 1of this article, we talked about the five-step process to answer Sentence Correction problems, and in Part 2, we discussed some drills to build the needed skills. Make sure to read both of those before continuing with this third article in the series.
Drill Number 3: Find a Starting Point
Once again, open up your Official Guide and look at some problems you have done before. This time, do not read the original sentence. Instead, cover it up.
Compare the answers, and try to articulate all the things that the problem is testing. Note that you can tell what is being tested even if you cannot tell how to answer. For example, you might see a verb switching back and forth between singular and plural. If the subject is not underlined, then you have no idea which verb form is required, because you literally have not even seen the subject. You do, though, know that subject-verb agreement is at issue.
With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense.
In Part 1 of this article, we talked about the five-step process to answer Sentence Correction (SC) problems:
Take a First Glance
Read the Sentence
Find a Starting Point
Eliminate Answers
Repeat Steps 3 and 4
If you have not already learned that process, read Part 1 before continuing with this article.
Drills to Build Skills
How do you learn to do all this stuff? You are going to build some skills that will help at each stage of the way. The drills are summarized in this post; if you want the full description of each, check out the original article on the Manhattan GMAT blog.
Drill Number 1: First Glance
Open up your Official Guide (OG) and find some lower-numbered SC questions that you have already tried in the past. Give yourself a few seconds (no more than five!) to glance at a problem, then look away and say out loud what you noticed in those few seconds.
With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense.
Manhattan GMAT has developed a special process for Sentence Correction (SC). Some students and classes have seen it, but here we are sharing it publicly! Read on and let us know what you think.
As with any process, you will sometimes decide to deviate for some good reason. For most questions, though, you will follow this basic process.
In this post, I briefly introduce each step, but the full article goes into more detail, so make sure to follow up by reading that.
Take a First Glance
The idea here is to take a “holistic” glance at the entire screen: let your eyes go slightly out of focus (do NOT read!), look at about the middle of whatever text is on the screen, and take in three things:
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania plans to send out Round 2 interview invitations today, and once again the school is using its team-based discussion format to evaluate MBA candidates, in place of a traditional business school admissions interview. Understandably, Wharton applicants get anxious about this atypical interview, because the approach creates a very different dynamic from what one usually encounters in a one-on-one meeting—and with other applicants also in the room, one cannot help but feel less in control of the content and direction of the conversation. Yet despite the uncertainty, here are a few things that interviewees can expect:
You will need to arrive at the interview with an idea—a response to a challenge that will be presented in your interview invitation.
Having the best idea is much less important than how you interact with others in the group and communicate your thoughts. So while you should prepare an idea ahead of time, that is only part of what you will be evaluated on.
Your peers will have prepared their ideas as well. Chances are that ideas will be raised that you know little or nothing about. Do not worry! The admissions committee members are not measuring your topical expertise. Instead, they want to see how you add to the collective output of the team.
After the team-based discussion, you will have a short one-on-one session with someone representing Wharton’s admissions team. More than likely, you will be asked to reflect on how the team-based discussion went for you; this will require self-awareness on your part.
A first-of-its-kind, on-demand MBA application experience that delivers a personalized curriculum for you and leverages interactive tools to guide you through the entire MBA application process.
