Go to a better blog!


You can find a better version of my blog at http://www.adammarkus.com/blog/.

Be sure to read my Key Posts on the admissions process. Topics include essay analysis, resumes, recommendations, rankings, and more.

November 28, 2008

MBA生ライブレポート

My former client and fellow blogger, Kaz, who I have previously interviewed, has a new column, MBA生ライブレポート.

私の以前のクライアントで、MIT Sloan在校生のKazが、MBA生活のコラムを書いていますので、紹介します。
Kaz自身のブログはこちら(http://blog.goo.ne.jp/kaz1204)です。

私は以前、『あなたはMBAを必要としていますか?』という記事を書きました。
そこで紹介したチェックポイントを考えるにあたって、Kazのような在校生の日々の記録は、あなたに何かのヒントを与えてくれるかもしれません。

-アダム

November 24, 2008

Yes, I have been busy...

To my regular readers, you may have noticed that my posts in November have been rather minimal. Well, I am sorry, but as you imagine, I have been busy working with clients. I am preparing some posts for the blog, but my writing time has been in short supply.

I can't promise things will get much better till mid-January, but I will try to get something substantive up this month.

Meanwhile I still continue posting stuff on Twitter. You can see that here.

Cheers,
Adam
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Warning: Stanford Online Application Essay Page

I just wanted to let all Fall 2009 Stanford GSB Applicants (Click here for my full analysis of Stanford GSB MBA Essay Questions for 2008/2009), for 2nd and 3rd round, know that the online application question page does a awful job of presenting the Essay C questions. It states the following:

"Essay C: Please answer two of the questions listed below.
  1. Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team.

  2. Tell us about a time when you felt most effective as a leader.

  3. Tell us about a time when you tried to reach a goal or complete a task that was challenging, difficult, or frustrating.

  4. Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined, established, or expected."
However, the online application does not include an important constraint on the question which is explained in the online application instructions:

"When answering two of the questions in Essay C, please tell us not only what you did, but also how you did it. Tell us the outcome and describe how people responded. Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years."

Applicants have to take the statement "Please go to the 'Application Instructions' on the left menu for detailed information," located at the top of the Essay page literally. If one simply wrote essays on the basis on the online application essay page, it would be quite reasonable to unaware of this last three year limitation on the C essays. Of course, applicants who read the questions on the Stanford web page will already be aware of this three year requirement, but their seems no reason to not put on the essay application page. While most applicants will hopefully read the great content that Stanford has on this web page regarding their essays, GSB certainly has got a very user-unfriendly approach to handling this crucial limitation on their online application. This is clearly just a real good example of why it is always important to read the instructions closely. Or at least my essay analysis.

Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to. Before emailing me questions about your chances for admission or personal profile, please see my recent post on "Why I don't analyze profiles without consulting with the applicant." If you are interested in my graduate admission consulting services, please click here.
-Adam Markus
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November 14, 2008

Must Read BusinessWeek Article

I encourage all MBA applicants to read the BW article, "Crisis Hits the Business Schools," by Alison Damast. This does not make for happy reading, but is great reporting on both the job outlook for graduates and the increase in applications this year.
-Adam

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November 13, 2008

One word version is "Booth" not "GSB"

DON'T CALL IT GSB. DEALBREAKER has published an email from Dean Ted Snyder on what to call Chicago Booth. All Booth applicants should only use one of the three names below. When you want to only use one word, call it "Booth," and never call it "GSB." And if you applied before the announcement, don't worry. Here is the email:
"From: Dean Ted Snyder
Date: Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 4:02 PM
Subject: How to refer to our school
Chicago Booth Community,

Our announcement
of David Booth's very generous and powerful vote of confidence in our business school and our rebranding the school The University of Chicago Booth School of Business have been nothing short of historic. The feedback has been as extraordinary as the gift and the naming of the school itself.

To clarify, there are three ways to refer to our school:
*The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
*Chicago Booth
*Booth

The rebranding of the school has empowered us to move away from a generic description, Graduate School of Business or GSB, to Chicago Booth, which has the potential to become a world class brand befitting this world class institution. Our goal is for Chicago Booth to be the best business school in the world and to be recognized as such.
We believe that referring to the school by name rather than by its initials will go a long way in helping us achieve this goal. We would like to elicit your support and help in successfully launching our new brand. When referring to your school, please use The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago Booth or simply Booth. Please resist the temptation to call the school the BSB or the Booth School of Business.
I am confident that propelled by David's record breaking gift and the amazing press coverage we've already received, your thoughtful stewardship of the Chicago Booth brand will be just what we need to achieve unprecedented levels of broader recognition, familiarity and respect exceeding that of any other business school.
Thanks for your help and support.
Ted"






Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to. Before emailing me questions about your chances for admission or personal profile, please see my recent post on "Why I don't analyze profiles without consulting with the applicant." If you are interested in my graduate admission consulting services, please click here.
-Adam Markus
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November 07, 2008

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

The financial change the University of Chicago Business School has been looking for has arrived. Chicago GSB is dead. Long live Chicago Booth! It will be about three months before I can change the "Chicago GSB" name and tags in my posts, but what is in a name? Well in this case $300 million. Chicago Booth has not yet fully changed its website to reflect the name change, but I suggest you call it "Chicago Booth" and not "Chicago GSB." Here is the full press release (11/6/08):

Alumnus David Booth gives $300 million to University of Chicago business school; Largest gift in the University’s history. School to be renamed in his honor.
An entrepreneur and visionary marketer who built his successful investment firm on finance principles he learned at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business has returned the favor by making the largest donation in the University’s history and the largest gift to any business school in the world, the school announced today (Thursday, November 6).
The donor is David G. Booth, founder and chief executive of Dimensional Fund Advisors, an investment firm, his wife Suzanne Booth and their family. David Booth received an M.B.A. from the school in 1971. The combination of an up-front payment, the income stream, and the equity interest provided by the Booth gift is valued at $300 million. In recognition of the gift, the school will be renamed the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“The very first course I took at the University of Chicago was taught by Eugene Fama and it was a life-changing event for me,” said Booth, who was a Ph.D. student at the business school and a research assistant to Fama, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance. Fama is the founder of the efficient market hypothesis, which says investors in stocks should not be able to beat the market since there is no way for them to know something about a stock that is not already reflected in the stock’s price. Instead, market efficiency suggests investors are better off buying and holding widely diversified portfolios – the basic thinking behind index funds.
“I remember Professor Fama standing up the first day of class and saying ‘This is the most practical course you will ever take,’ and it turned out to be true,” Booth said. “We built Dimensional Fund Advisors around his set of ideas. I am hoping that others will join me in giving back to this amazing business school. Dean Snyder and his colleagues will need tremendous resources to realize their vision of maintaining and enhancing Chicago’s influence on business and markets.”
President Robert J. Zimmer called the gift a vivid illustration of the power of ideas.
“This gift is extraordinary in both its generosity and its endorsement of the University’s mission,” said Zimmer. “The relationship between David Booth and Eugene Fama – and the idea that captivated them both – is another example of how groundbreaking theory, rigorous examination and application of principles come together often at the University of Chicago.”
“Given the profile of our school and its role in the world, it is imperative that the person who names the school embodies its values and, moreover, is a person who is of great integrity and who commands respect,” said Edward Snyder, dean of the University of Chicago business school. “In David Booth, we have a person who exceeds all the relevant criteria.”
“This gift provides our school with a perfectly-timed opportunity to move aggressively forward, ensuring that we continue to attract the best faculty in the world,” said Snyder, who also is the George Pratt Shultz Professor of Economics.
When he was a student in the business school, Booth decided that rather than continuing with his plan to return to his home state of Kansas for an academic career, he would apply his training to the real world.
After founding Dimensional Fund Advisors in 1981 with University of Chicago classmate Rex Sinquefield, a 1972 M.B.A. graduate, Booth leveraged his Chicago education and the ongoing flow of ideas from its business school to develop strategies for his firm that were grounded in the efficient market hypothesis which says stock prices reflect all available information. Dimensional Fund Advisors now manages $120 billion for institutional investors and clients of registered financial advisors. The firm has U.S. offices in Austin, Chicago and Santa Monica, and international offices in London, Sydney and Vancouver.
Dimensional Fund Advisors relies on Eugene Fama as well as other faculty members from the University of Chicago business school to provide thought leadership to the firm. George Constantinides, the Leo Melamed Professor of Finance; John Gould, the Steven G. Rothmeier Professor and Distinguished Service Professor of Economics; and Abbie Smith, the Boris and Irene Stern Professor of Accounting are members of a DFA advisory board.
“By using the efficient market hypothesis developed at the University of Chicago business school, we have been able to document clearly that you don’t have to try to outguess the market in order to have a good investment experience,” Booth said.
“It would be hard to find anyone who benefited more from a University of Chicago education and from the faculty at Chicago than I have,” said Booth, who has been a member of the Council on the Graduate School of Business since 1999 and a member of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees since 2002. “I believe the quality of a business school’s faculty will determine the quality of a business school over the long run. The school is already in a strong position. This gift is intended to help it keep moving forward.”
The school plans to use the money for several new initiatives, including aggressively attracting and retaining star faculty. Other uses being considered include developing new faculty groups in academic areas not normally associated with business schools, expanding existing research centers, and launching ambitious programs to better leverage the school’s intellectual capital.
The gift may also be used to expand the school’s international presence beyond its existing campuses in London and Singapore.
Booth earlier gave the University of Chicago business school $10 million to help fund construction of the Charles M. Harper Center on the school’s Chicago campus.
His latest gift, from the Booth Family Trust, represents an economic interest in a portion of the trust’s shares in Dimensional Holdings, Inc., parent company of Dimensional Fund Advisors. The business school will receive an income stream from the shares and the terminal value of the shares if they are sold.
Before Booth’s gift, the largest gift to a business school was $105 million given to Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in 2006 by Philip H. Knight, founder and chairman of Nike. Other large gifts to business schools include $100 million to the University of Michigan in 2004 from Stephen M. Ross, $85 million to the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2007 from a combined partnership of 13 alumni and $60 million to the Darden School at the University of Virginia from Frank Batten Sr., retired chairman and chief executive of Landmark Communications.
The previous largest gift to the University of Chicago was $100 million from an anonymous donor in 2007. The funds were designated for undergraduate student aid.
The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine was named in 1968 and the University’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies was named in 1990.
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is one of the leading business schools in the world. The school’s faculty includes many renowned scholars and its graduates include many business leaders worldwide.
The Chicago approach to management education is distinguished by how it leverages fundamental knowledge, its rigor, and its practical application to business challenges.
Chicago Booth offers a full-time M.B.A. program, an evening M.B.A. program, a weekend M.B.A. program, an executive M.B.A. program in London and Singapore in addition to Chicago, a Ph.D. program, open enrollment executive education, and custom corporate education.

Questions? Write comments or contact me directly at adammarkus@gmail.com. Please see my FAQ regarding the types of questions I will respond to.

-Adam Markus
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