Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school, but the educational experience itself is 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 profile Aneel Karnani from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
Aneel Karnani (“Corporate Strategy,” “Strategy for Growth”) is chair of the strategy department at Michigan Ross and teaches courses in both the core and elective curricula. All the students mbaMission interviewed about Karnani lauded his innovative way of teaching, which, one said, keeps you “at the edge of your seat.” Karnani is known to challenge his students constantly, forcing them to rethink their views and opinions. His areas of interest include corporate competitiveness—particularly in the context of companies who are growing in emerging economies—and the role of the private sector in the fight against poverty.
For more information about Michigan Ross and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.
Virtually every week, as part of our Monday Morning Essay Tip, we offer a “how to” and a “how not to” example. This week, we cannot offer a simple illustration, because our focus is on humor, which is nuanced and can be deemed appropriate only with a full understanding of the context in which it is presented. So, we offer a strong suggestion instead of a hard rule: be very careful when using humor in your essays. The line between being funny and coming across as immature, inappropriate or even careless is a very fine one.
In our view, writers who use humor best are those who possess the skill to appear clever or witty and are not striving to portray themselves as stand-up comics. Your essays are not the proper venue in which to showcase your latest routine, though a mildly self-deprecating anecdote with humorous undertones could help reveal your personality if well executed. Remember, humor itself is not the goal of your essay but part of a broader story and message to your reader. If you have a strong voice and can use humor with subtlety, then proceed, but even then, do so with caution and ensure that you get an honest, solid critique before you submit your final draft.
This past weekend, mbaMission held its fourth annual team conference in New York City. For this event—the only one of its kind in the industry—our entire staff flies in from around the world (London, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) to focus on intensive training and developing best practices for serving our clients. Why are we telling you this? At mbaMission, we offer you a highly skilled, unified, full-time team. This is not a part-time job for our consultants—it is a professional calling. To maintain our expertise in MBA consulting and our ability to provide our business school candidate clients with superior service, we conduct regular exercises like our yearly conference to ensure we are constantly improving, growing and learning. We are dedicated to delivering excellence, and our ongoing efforts to stay informed and further our skills proves that fact. Check out some photos from our conference below:
Candidates often worry about exceeding schools’ requested word limits, even by a mere word or two. Although we certainly believe that staying within the stated limits is best and advise candidates to do so, we also feel that admissions directors are rational individuals who are not unnecessarily punitive. We have a difficult time imagining that an admissions director would ever say, “We think this candidate will be the next great CEO, but he exceeded the limit by 20 words, so we don’t want him.” Basically, we recommend that candidates not exceed word limits by more than 5%, but we also suggest that applicants use good judgment and avoid exceeding them on every essay. Although again, we advise applicants to stick as closely to stated limits as possible, we have certainly seen candidates get into Harvard Business School with one or two 420-word essays, even though the school’s word limits are set at 400.
We invite candidates to make case-by-case judgment calls with word limits, but we view page limits differently. We strongly insist that our candidates stay within established page limits. When one exceeds a set word limit, this is not immediately clear, but this is certainly not the case when one exceeds a set page limit! Adding an additional page, even if only to include an extra sentence or two, sends a clear message to the admissions committee that you are disregarding the rules—something you obviously do not want to do!
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they select a business school, 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 Kenneth French from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Kenneth French (“Investments”) has published numerous papers in collaboration with the famous Eugene Fama of the Chicago Booth School of Business, who is widely recognized as the “father of modern finance.” French is notable in his own right, however, and was elected to head the American Finance Association in 2007. His popular “Investments” course is a “must take,” according to students we interviewed. “People really enjoy that class,” a second-year student emphasized to mbaMission. In fact, approximately 50% of each class enrolls in the course. Given the demand for the class, students must rank it highly when selecting their electives to have a shot at gaining a spot.
French teaches the course using a lecture format, but a recent graduate explained to mbaMission that French likes to use the Socratic method and challenge student assumptions: “French has a dry sense of humor with some sarcasm, but he is very approachable.” One alumnus told us, “French is a very compelling speaker—probably one of the best at Tuck, and he does a good job of explaining complex material well.” And a second-year student we interviewed remarked, “He has a cutting-edge academic mind in terms of how to look at investments, and his theories are different from what a lot of academics teach.”
For more information about Dartmouth Tuck and 15 other top-ranked MBA schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.
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Aneel Karnani (“Corporate Strategy,” “Strategy for Growth”) is chair of the strategy department at Michigan Ross and teaches courses in both the core and elective curricula. All the students mbaMission interviewed about Karnani lauded his innovative way of teaching, which, one said, keeps you “at the edge of your seat.” Karnani is known to challenge his students constantly, forcing them to rethink their views and opinions. His areas of interest include corporate competitiveness—particularly in the context of companies who are growing in emerging economies—and the role of the private sector in the fight against poverty.
Kenneth French (“Investments”) has published numerous papers in collaboration with the famous Eugene Fama of the Chicago Booth School of Business, who is widely recognized as the “father of modern finance.” French is notable in his own right, however, and was elected to head the American Finance Association in 2007. His popular “Investments” course is a “must take,” according to students we interviewed. “People really enjoy that class,” a second-year student emphasized to mbaMission. In fact, approximately 50% of each class enrolls in the course. Given the demand for the class, students must rank it highly when selecting their electives to have a shot at gaining a spot.
