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Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when choosing a business school, but the educational experience 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 focus on Joseph Stiglitz from Columbia Business School.

A 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and a member of the National Academy of Science, Joseph Stiglitz (“Globalization and Markets and the Changing Economic Landscape” [EMBA]) is executive director and founder of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. Before joining the Columbia Business School (CBS) faculty in 2001, Stiglitz was chief economist for the World Bank (1997–2000) and a member of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisors under President William J. Clinton (1993–1997), serving as the council’s chairman from 1995 to 1997. Stiglitz is the creator of a branch of economics called “Economics of Information,” whose central concept—which examines how intuitions such as the stock market process and relate information—helped earn Stiglitz the Nobel Prize. He has authored a number of books, the most recent of which is entitled Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).

For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at CBS or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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

With MBA interview decisions continuing to arrive this time of year, we thought now would be an appropriate time to discuss challenging interview situations. Most business school interviews are straightforward opportunities for an interviewer to learn more about a candidate’s personal and professional backgrounds, goals, reasons for selecting a specific school and leadership/team experiences, yet interviews can vary dramatically from school to school and sometimes include a few peculiarities. So, what constitutes a “tough” interview, and how can you best navigate one?

Stoic interviewer: Some interviewers can be unemotional, refusing to give the candidate any indication as to whether he or she is making a positive impression or not. Of course, when an applicant is under intense pressure, this perceived lack of approval can be misunderstood as a sign of disapproval. The key in managing such an interview is to tune out the interviewer’s lack of emotion. Focus on your answers and do your best to not be distracted by anything about the interviewer, tuning out everything except the questions he or she is posing. “Reading” the interviewer in real time can be challenging, and you should instead concentrate on showcasing your strengths.

Philosophical questions: Most candidates are ready to discuss their experiences and accomplishments, but many are not prepared to discuss their values and philosophy on life. Harvard Business School in particular likes to understand applicants’ motivations and will ask questions like “What is your motivation to succeed?,”  “What drives you?” and “What gives you purpose in life?” The key to answering these sorts of questions is pretty simple: expect and prepare for them in advance (after all, you are being warned right now).  You cannot assume that all the questions you will receive during your interview will be experiential.

Persistent questioning: Sometimes a tough interviewer will continuously delve deeper into a subject, such as by repeatedly asking, “Can you be more specific about [the topic under discussion]?” after posing an initial question. These kinds of unusual pressure tactics can be disconcerting, but the key is to simply stay on topic. No matter how persistent, the interviewer is always essentially asking you about a subject that you know quite well—you! So, again, by avoiding the distraction of the tactic and sticking to your agenda, you should be fine.

mbaMission offers even more interview advice in our Interview Guide, as well as through targeted one-on-one mock interview sessions and group Wharton team-based discussion simulations, so check those out!

How does MIT Sloan review applications? True to the rigorous analytic nature of its curriculum—in a rigorous analytic fashion! When the admissions office receives an application, the candidate’s information is loaded into a database and the application is printed. Rod Garcia, who has been admissions director for MIT Sloan for the past decade, first reviews every application online, then distributes the applications randomly among the school’s admissions readers, all of whom are either internal admissions staff members or contract readers. After picking up a batch of applications, readers review, score and then return them one week later. The scores are entered into the database, where Garcia reviews them to determine which candidates will be interviewed.

After the selected candidates have been interviewed, their applications are scored again, and the committee then decides which individuals to admit. Application scoring is based on nine attributes, which Sloan divides into two major groups: demonstrated success (e.g., GPA, GMAT, work accomplishments) and leadership (e.g., high competency in creativity, relationship building, goal setting, influencing). Each attribute group is scored separately, and the two scores are added together. At mbaMission, we always tell candidates that MBA admissions is not a science—yet at MIT Sloan, a little science comes into play after all…

For more information on MIT Sloan or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

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

After visiting campus or interviewing, many business school candidates choose to write thank you letters to their respective hosts. But what makes a good thank you note?

1) Personalization: When writing to your host/interviewer, show sincerity by personalizing your letter. By handwriting your letter and mentioning specifics about your conversation and experiences, you will continue to foster your connection with your interviewer and show that your interaction truly made an impression.

2) Brevity: Your letter should be no more than a few sentences long. If you write several paragraphs, you run the risk of creating the negative impression that you are trying too hard or that you simply do not respect limits (possibly even suggesting that you might carry on too long in class). By being brief and sincere, you will instead make a powerful impression that will yield results.

3) Speed: Ideally, send your letter within 24 hours of your visit and within two days at the most. Most interviewers must submit their reports very soon after the interview, and your thank you note will have a better chance of positively influencing this report if it is received before the report is submitted. Also, after too long, your interest may logically fall into question, or your host may simply forget some of the details of your conversation that you are trying to reinforce. By writing your letter immediately, you will create the impression that you have been energized by the experience and are eager to maintain your connection.

Thank you notes are generally not a “make or break” aspect of your candidacy, but they can establish continuity and demonstrate your continued interest to your target school’s representatives. We encourage candidates to follow up with such notes because they are a low-cost way of reinforcing a positive impression and relationship.

In our “What I Learned at…” series, MBAs discuss the tools and skills their business schools provided as they launched their careers.

Moran Amir, commonly referred to as “Mo” by her peers, is a second year at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-founder of ADORNIA Fine Jewelry, the online destination to learn about and shop for fine jewelry. By applying innovative editorial content and fashion merchandising to the fine jewelry segment, ADORNIA reintroduces the art and tradition of jewelry to a modern generation of women. In Part 4 of this series, Mo explains how the school’s Entrepreneurship Club fostered her interest in both following an entrepreneurial path with ADORNIA and building a female start-up movement at Wharton. 

During the third week of pre-term at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, a busload of entrepreneurially curious first years—including me—descended on New York City to attend the Wharton Founder’s Retreat, sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Club. We first years were given an opportunity early on in our Wharton experience to meet other recently graduated Wharton entrepreneurs and start thinking about potential business ideas. From that day forward, I loved the entrepreneurship community at Wharton and felt a strong connection to the particular rebellious and productive energy these individuals possessed. Even before meeting my business partner, Bex, I realized that my peers at Wharton represented fertile soil among which to brainstorm, evaluate and collaborate on ventures such as my company, ADORNIA Fine Jewelry.

The recent demographics at Wharton speak to a significant start-up trend. The Entrepreneurship Club at Wharton, popularly known as the eClub, is one of the largest professional clubs in the MBA program, consisting of more than 400 members. Roughly 40% of my incoming class slated entrepreneurship as their career focus at Wharton. I looked around the room at the Founder’s Retreat and saw a sizable number of Wharton start-ups getting off the ground. Its status as the preeminent finance school notwithstanding, Wharton that day for me became a start-up of start-ups. Though I learned later that year in my introductory finance course (“Finance 601”) how to quantify risk, I learned through the eClub how to embrace it.

At the entrepreneurship retreat, I also happened to notice a ubiquitous interest in consumer-retail ventures among recent female graduates and peers. A full 45% of my class is composed of females, the highest female admittance rate ever for Wharton and across the board for any MBA program. The increased affinity for entrepreneurship was dovetailing with the rise of female acceptance rates at Wharton. These two trends have helped advance innovation in gender-biased fields such as beauty and fashion, which have been historically neglected by an overwhelmingly male Silicon Valley. I started to do more research on entrepreneurship and gender and came across some startling statistics. The Venture Capital Human Capital Report indicates that women represent only 8% of founders of venture capital–backed companies. A mere 3% of all Y Combinator founders have been women. While traditional venture capital has failed to cross the industry gender divide, ADORNIA and other ventures started by female MBAs seek to fill in the gaps.

Currently in our second year at Wharton, Bex and I have taken the mission to our home front at Wharton. We see an opportunity through ADORNIA to carve out a space at Wharton for female entrepreneurship. To aid our cause, we have enlisted powerful Wharton female alumnae such as Denise Incandela, chief marketing officer for Saks Fifth Avenue, whom I had met during my first year at Wharton at small group dinners and career talks. The female alumni network has helped ADORNIA navigate everything from trademark questions to effective social media campaigns. Leveraging the Wharton brand and my retail connections also brought me together with successful female entrepreneurs from outside the Wharton community, such as Alexandra Wilkis Wilson. Alexandra, a Harvard Business School graduate and one of the founders of Gilt Groupe, became the first member of ADORNIA’s advisory board last spring and has since then provided critical advice to the company. Bex and I found endless wisdom in Alexandra and learned how her success with Gilt Groupe helped directly nurture other successful female start-ups such as Birchbox and Rent the Runway. Like Alexandra, we hope to inspire other women to not only buy ADORNIA fine jewels, but also to follow in our footsteps.