After years of receiving scripted answers to questions from would-be business school students re: why they want to go to Harvard/Wharton/Stanford/Sloan or what they think of a company’s earnings potential or where they see themselves in five to ten years or what they ate for breakfast, admissions officers have lately been taking a new tack in an attempt to see the “real” side of applicants. Hoping to get a little “unrehearsed honesty” and insight into who these people really are, prospective students are being asked to submit “reflections” (“a short, off-the-cut note that must be submitted within 24 hours of an admissions interview”) and take part in “team-based discussions,” for which they’re told to “relax, be genuine,” not worry about giving the “right” answer, and just say what they really think, rather than what a coach told them to say they think. Unfortunately, Harvard and Wharton officials apparently have no idea who they’re dealing with here. You can’t make future b-school students relax and be genuine! You can’t! You won’t! Read more »
Wharton
Business School Applicants Having None Of This “Show Us You Can Speak Without Paying A Consultant $500 To Show You How” Crap
By Bess LevinUS News has regaled us with its annual ranking of the top business schools. I know you need a safe space to get huffy about perceived slights (be it your MBA program being lower than you believe is accurate or by having to suffer the indignity of an inferior institution being too close on the list), so let it out here and now. Read more »
US News has regaled us with its annual ranking of the top business schools. I know you need a safe space to get huffy about perceived slights (be it your MBA program being lower than you believe is accurate or by having to suffer the indignity of an inferior institution being too close on the list), so let it out here and now. (Tomorrow Matt will lead us in a rousing discussion over the best CFA test prep classes.)
101. Rollins College (Crummer)
[...]
25. Ohio State University (Fisher)
24. Georgetown University (McDonough)
23. Indiana University–Bloomington (Kelley)
22. Washington University in St. Louis (Olin)
21. University of Southern California (Marshall)
19. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
19. Emory University (Goizueta)
18. Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
17. University of Texas–Austin (McCombs)
16. Cornell University (Johnson)
15. University of California–Los Angeles (Anderson)
13. University of Virginia (Darden)
13. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross)
12. Duke University (Fuqua)
11. New York University (Stern) Read more »
And the feeling is mutual. Read more »
Gang, something big has come up this morning and we need to discuss it right now. Don’t want to scare anyone but also don’t want to minimize the enormity of this news so let’s just get right to it. Wall Street has been keeping a secret. Look around at your colleagues this morning. The ones who attended schools like Yale, Princeton and Harvard and played sports like lacrosse and squash and use the word ‘summer’ as a verb and describe the color red as Nantucket red and argue the HJs don’t count if you give them to a guy whose named ends in IV and get aroused at the mere thought of an ACK sticker? They might have had an easier time breaking into the industry than those who graduated from lower ranked universities and did not get their WASP on. Yes, really.
After you’ve picked your jaws up off the floor, you’re presumably going to want to fight us on this and shout “It can’t be!” and “You lie!” Sorry to say it, pumpkins, it’s the truth. But don’t take our word for it- someone actually did a study on the shocking phenomenon. Read more »
Their stock pick won the school the third annual “Michigan Interactive Investments Undergraduate Investment Conference” title. Here, the delegates sent by Wharton to compete explain what they like about the company (“big post-bankrupty opportunity”). Read more »
Son Of Senator Starts Hedge Fund Out Of Dad’s Basement Following DE Shaw Summer Internship
By Bess LevinAfter he graduated from Columbia Business School last June, Adam Wyden probably had a bunch of offers to mull over from various employers. What he really wanted to do, though, was be a hedge fund manager. So he figured he’d just start his own shop, having the experience of trading stocks for his own account as Wharton undergrad (Class of ’06) and a summer internship with DE Shaw under his belt. Interested in getting a piece of the action? Read more »
Penn defensive back Josh Powers likes playing football just fine but after he graduates plans to work on Wall Street. In fact, he already has a gig lined up with George Weiss Associates, having interviewed with the head of Weiss’s equity trading desk and getting “the thumbs up.” How did he accomplish this incredible feat? This morning, Bloomberg blows the lid off the story. Read more »
Regular Dealbreaker readers know that we spend a lot of time around these parts having the CFA v. MBA debate (well, not me, but some of you, amongst yourselves, in the comments, losing your shit). Today brings a point in favor of the b-school track, courtesy of Wharton. Apparently a bit of disagreement has been brewing between a group of students and the administration, re: whether or not the future business leaders of the world should be allowed to skip class in order to go on a ski trip to Park City. The administration says no, they shouldn’t, because it reflects disrespect for academic commitments, is discouraging to the faculty, creates a divide among the students going Wharton brand if this sort of thing go out to a) the rest of the Penn campus and b) the outside world in general. Obviously, the students wanting so badly to go on this trip saw things a bit differently and a dialogue ensued. For those of you who, after reading the full back and forth after the jump, would challenge the assertion that this case reflects a point for the MBA track rather than the CFA, I would ask you to show me the CFA program where you’re afforded the opportunity and downtime to say and draft stuff like:
* “The trip in no way takes away from Wharton’s rigorous analytical MBA program”
* “I honestly can’t think of a more rigorous or more analytical MBA program than Wharton’s.”
* “I am told that seasoned Wharton professors typically earn $250K or more per year. It would be nice if anyone in the administration held professors accountable for teaching quality.”
* “How can it be hard to defend the Wharton brand on the Penn campus when the Wharton brand is far more prestigious? Penn should be defending itself to us!”
Nassim Taleb Would’ve Trusted Raj Rajaratnam With The Keys To His House, Not His Fridge
By Bess Levin
So you can imagine The Black Swan author’s surprise to find out his b-school chum is an alleged insider trading specialist.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, got a shock when he opened the newspaper last weekend and saw a picture of an old classmate from Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania.
“He was an extremely likeable fellow, chubby, a warm personality. If I had to give my keys to someone in case of getting locked out of the house, he’d be the kind of guy I’d go to.”
Poor, poor Wharton students. Thing have gotten so bad that the last resort has become “a job teaching in Dubai,” “the State Department,” or, yes, “becoming a rabbi.”
“It’s always been about the brass ring and it’s always been about the brand recognition, and for a lot of students that meant jobs at Goldman Sachs,” said Emanuel Sturman, director of career services at Dartmouth College. “It’s premature to say the bloom is off the rose totally, but I think students are starting to look at a wider array of brass rings.”
So having discovered that, once you take finance out of the picture “…a lot of Wharton people were interesting” and as the recession greedily licks up their tears of ultimate sorrow, what advice might we have for Riana, Daniel and Jessica, oh, wisest Dealbreaker?
Business Grads Looking Beyond Wall Street [The New York Times]
- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
