Thursday, June 24, 2010

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Rank '09 School name Sal tod Weighted sal. ($) Salary inc. (%) Value Int. students
1 University of Pennsylvania: Wharton 170,210 169,784 119 100 44
11 University of Chicago: Booth         154,340 150,272 113 96 42
6 Stanford University GSB 173,935 170,340 105 94 43
3 Harvard Business School 164,783 163,637 115 86 33
4 Columbia Business School 168,073 164,310 132 81 43
9 MIT Sloan School of Management 155,811 156,451 121 79 36

Essential Tools for the MBA Student

So suppose you have posted an excellent score on the GMAT, written some fabulous essays (that are even mostly true), been accepted to an outstanding MBA program, mailed in your deposit, secured some gigantic student loans, and you've loaded up the truck to move. Given the impending impoverishment of your lifestyle is there anything that you can't do without? Absolutely. Every MBA student needs, at a minimum, the same four essential pieces of gear:

1. The laptop computer. Don't even think about a desktop; the lack of portability will hugely cramp your mobility when working in a group.

2. The financial calculator. Yes, you have that laptop. Yes, it has Excel. But it's annoying to have to pull out the laptop every time you need to multiply a string of numbers. Another excellent route is to just procure a software-based financial calculator for your handheld, and suddenly your PDA (or phone) can calculate the yield on a 10-year T-bill. That's slick.

3. The mobile telephone. If you don't have one yet, get one with good coverage both on campus and in the cities in which you plan to spend significant time job-hunting.

4. A subscription to a major business-related journal. This is absolutely indispensable if you are heading into a career in investment banking, but it's almost as important for everyone else.

Choosing a Business School Should you or shouldn't you? Here are some tips on making the choice to go to business school

Your first requirement in picking a school is to know your objective. All told, there are probably four main reasons for enduring two years of study for the MBA:

•" You want to know how business works. The MBA has been described as virtually a prerequisite to being an effective manager of a commercial enterprise.

•" You want to advance your career. Most MBA programs equip their graduates to deal with many of the important questions that their organizations will be required to tackle over time, and that they will face in their careers.

•" You want to make an obscene amount of money. You have looked at what you're making now, and at the starting salaries of those MBA graduates, and you've decided you're in.

•" You want to teach. Teaching business administration is one of the most lucrative academic jobs one can get these days. Not many other university professors can earn in the low six figures as relatively junior faculty.

The next question is, what sort of program to attend. Broadly speaking, there are two options:

•" The full-time option. What full-time MBA programs offer through a total immersion process is unparalleled access to a wide range of faculty, speakers, contacts, recruiters, and alumni on a weekly, and even daily, basis. If you can afford to quit your day job, the experience is worth it.

•" Part-time, evening, and weekend programs. For those who have jobs that they either can't or don't want to surrender, there are other excellent options. Part-time programs generally allow students three to five years to complete the course work that a full-time program expects to cover in just two.

For more information on MBA school ratings see the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools, published by McGraw-Hill.

Adapted from McGraw-Hill's GMAT, by James Hasik, Stacey Rudnick, and Ryan Hackney. Book-only and book/CD-ROM versions available wherever books are sold.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

A B

1 5 Harvard University (MA)
1 9 Stanford University (CA)
3 1 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
4 15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
5 2 Northwestern University (Kellogg) (IL)
6 6 Columbia University (NY)
6 3 University of Chicago
8 7 Duke University (Fuqua) (NC)
9 4 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
10 16 University of California–Berkeley (Haas)

A=US News Rank
B=Business Week Rank