Category — Graduate School

Here is another online MBA ranking called “Smart Choice” from the website SuperScholar. According to the site, here is the ranking methodology:

In developing our Smart Choice online MBA ranking only AACSB and regionally accredited programs in the United States were considered, ensuring each program had already met the highest institutional standards of quality and accountability even before being submitted to the scrutiny and evaluation of our editors. From there we evaluated each program based on market reputation, recognition & awards, selectivity, accreditation and cost. If a program is on this list, you can be confident that it offers the quality, reputation and value to make it a truly Smart Choice for your online MBA.

Having taken a look at these rankings, we believe that they are solid and represent a good, subjective analysis of where you should look when choosing an online MBA degree.

Top 10 “Smart Choice” Online MBA Programs

#1. University of Florida (Hough Graduate School of Business)
#2. University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler School of Business)
#3. Indiana University (Kelley School of Business)
#4. Thunderbird School of Global Management
#5. Penn State World Campus (Smeal College of Business)
#6. Northeastern University
#7. Washington State University
#8. Florida International University (Chapman Graduate School of Business)
#9. Oklahoma State University (Spears School of Business)
#10. University of Massachusetts (Isenberg School of Management)

For the rest of the top 25 online MBA programs from SuperScholar’s Smart Choice awards, click here. The original article contains a description of each program as well as the costs of the program.

Ever dream of getting your MBA but thought the top schools were out of your reach? Well the website BusinessMBA.org has some nice tips on how to improve your chances for getting into one of the elite business schools for your MBA. The number one tip in our opinion is to not assume that you’re not qualified. Too many people think that the top business schools are out of their league and never even send in an application.

But if you play your cards right, you just may win the admissions lottery.

Here are the 10 tips for getting into a top ranked business school:

1. Understand what the school is looking for
2. Think like a marketer, not a student
3. Abandon “all-or-none” thinking
4. Do your competitive research
5. Craft a compelling career vision
6. Ensure that your career vision is believable
7. Convey a strong intellect and academic background
8. Use extracurricular activities to demonstrate leadership traits
9. Be strategic about your letters of recommendation
10. Be yourself during the interview

Source: 10 Steps to “Hacking” The Admissions Process At Elite Business Schools

US News & World Report has unveiled their 2010 MBA & Business Graduate Degree rankings. We think the US News & World Report rankings are to be taken seriously as they are one of the most well researched and respected ranking systems out there.

If you are considering a graduate degree in business such as an MBA, it would be worth your time to check out the rankings here.

Below we’ve listed the top 10 Executive MBA programs according to US News & World Report:

1. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) Philadelphia, PA
2. Northwestern University (Kellogg) Evanston, IL
3. University of Chicago (Booth) Chicago, IL
4. Duke University (Fuqua) Durham, NC
5. Columbia University New York, NY
6. New York University (Stern) New York, NY
7. University of California–Berkeley (Haas) Berkeley, CA
8. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross) Ann Arbor, MI
9. University of California–Los Angeles (Anderson) Los Angeles, CA
10. University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler) Chapel Hill, NC

When you are ready to commit a significant portion of your time and money to getting an MBA, you want to make sure you’re getting an education that’s going to transform your talent and ambition into a solid set of skills that deem you irresistible to the best employers. Business schools are competing to make their MBAs the most relevant to your success.

This month the MBA Roundtable released the results of its 2009 MBA Curricular Innovation Study indicating that 69% of MBA programs have significantly revised the curriculum in the past four years to improve the relevancy of the degree in response to criticism that they are not preparing graduates for today’s business challenges.

What Is Relevance?

Among the 69% of MBA programs making significant revisions to their curriculum, the most common change was the addition of ‘applied content’, or project-based courses. In addition to giving students more opportunities to take their learning out of the comfortable lecture hall and into the demanding real-world business simulations, respondents also reported that integration across topics and disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary content were popular changes.

MBA Programs That Get Into Details

MBA programs have traditionally focused on equipping students with big picture concepts, eschewing fine details of specific industries for personal leadership and decision making skills. Apparently that’s changing. The MBA Roundtable data reveals that 25% of MBA degree programs have added an industry specialization in the past three years. Common emphasis areas are healthcare, biotech, medicine, and entrepreneurship. Another change: about half the programs reported that they had added a focus on leadership development (as in, developing others) and global perspectives to their offerings.

Change is Good

And the changes just keep coming. 89% of all MBA programs surveyed are planning additional curricular changes.

“I think this is very promising news,” said Rodney Alsup, president of the MBA Roundtable. “It shows that there has been a concentrated effort among MBA programs to innovate and make changes that increase their relevance to both students and employers. Furthermore, this has been done in an educational environment that can be resistant to change, or, at the very least, has approval processes that make it difficult to make changes in a timely manner. Some schools need approval from their state boards of education prior to revising their curricula, for example.”

The motivation for these changes comes from both internal and external sources, according to the study. The most common motivator by far was internal quality improvement initiatives, with 64% of participants selecting it as one of their motivators. Among external motivators, “competitor schools” was the most commonly chosen answer, with 34% of respondents choosing it as one of their motivators.

If  you want to know more, check out all the results at www.mbaroundtable.org/events_preview.html.

Students have a new way to demonstrate their potential to succeed in business school. Along with GMAT scores, essays, and exhaustive applications, potential MBA candidates can now submit the results of personality testing directly to graduate programs. And while the use of this new technology is still a student choice, if the idea takes off you can expect graduate schools to begin requiring the personality test results as part of the standard package.

The Personal Potential Index

Educational Testing Service (ETS) has created the ETS Personal Potential Index (ETS PPI), a web-based evaluation system that provides graduate applicants ratings on specific personal attributes deemed by graduate and professional school deans and faculty to be critical for academic success.

The tool is the first of its kind to evaluate students’ noncognitive or personal attributes. Specifically, the testing process measures:

• Knowledge and Creativity
• Communication Skills
• Teamwork
• Resilience
• Planning and Organization
• Ethics and Integrity.

These “soft skills” are considered essential for academic success. The launch of ETS PPI marks the first large-scale use of noncognitive measures for admissions in higher education.

Michael L. Jeffries, Associate Dean of Students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Director of McNair Scholars & Minority Student Affairs, says ETS PPI will help identify candidates that might otherwise have been missed, while expanding opportunities for a diverse range of students. The McNair Scholars Program is a national initiative aimed at increasing the number of first-generation, low-income and/or underrepresented students in Ph.D. programs.

“The graduate community needs to continue to reduce barriers to graduate education and allow more underrepresented scholars to join the ranks of the professoriate,” explains Jeffries. “To the extent that the ETS PPI will broaden opportunities for students, it is something that I strongly support.”

Early Evidence of Success

Based on more than a decade of research, ETS PPI was developed in response to requests from graduate deans and admissions professionals to address a need for noncognitive measures to evaluate applicants. The development and introduction of ETS PPI comes with the full support of the independent Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) Board.

ETS PPI has been piloted for the past three years through the National Hispanic Research Center’s Project 1000, a program based at the University of Arizona that seeks to increase the number of underrepresented students in graduate school. ETS PPI also was successfully used during this time by ETS for selecting candidates for its summer intern program.

According to David G. Payne, Ph.D., Vice President and COO in the ETS Higher Education & School Assessments Division, research indicates that achievement gaps that exist in standardized tests do not exist in noncognitive measures, which is why ETS PPI is seen as a tool that may help to level the playing field for students seeking graduate and professional degrees, such as an MBA.

“Solid GRE scores and undergraduate grades are very important, but they don’t provide the complete picture of a candidate’s potential,” says Payne. “We’ve known for some time, thanks to research and anecdotal evidence, that qualities like resilience and teamwork were indicators of success in graduate school. The problem was how to measure them effectively. But now, with the introduction of ETS PPI, we have a tool that allows for accurate and valid measures of these critical personal attributes.”

Ready to Be Tested?

Students who have registered for the GRE General Test after May 1, 2009 will have the option of using ETS PPI and sending up to four ETS PPI evaluation reports at no additional cost. ETS PPI is not exclusive to GRE registrants. It is also available to past GRE test takers and others for a fee of $20 per report.

Student can create an ETS PPI profile online as well as contact information for the evaluators he or she would like to complete an ETS PPI evaluation. ETS then sends an e-mail to each evaluator inviting them to access the ETS PPI system to complete the student’s evaluation. Evaluators log in to the system and respond to a series of statements to rate the student on the six personal attributes and to provide an overall rating of the student. The student is notified when each evaluation has been completed and can choose the schools to which the evaluations will be sent. ETS creates an evaluation report, and sends it to the institutions designated by the student.

Find out more here: www.ets.org/ppi

The way ETS describes the process, it sounds like an extended reference letter, but apparently the science supports the results.

What do you think about personality trait testing as a criteria for grad school admission?