Deferred Admissions MBA Programs - Poets&Quants

The college senior seeking my counsel on applying to Stanford GSB’s deferred admissions program beamed a sense of urgency. She was driven by a passion for women’s social entrepreneurship in the global economy and wanted to make an impact now. She had done her research and was clear why the MBA was critical to accelerating her ambitions—and from GSB specifically. She also understood her unique value proposition and didn’t want to wait the anticipated five-plus years to realize her dreams. This client also happened to have impressive leadership experience and was an academic rock star.

Deferred Admissions MBA programs like the Silver Scholars are designed to secure early career talent. The class profile for Harvard’s 2+2 Program (among the most sought-after) boasts a median GMAT of 730, a GPA of 3.67 and 11% acceptance rate (out of some 1,121 applications) – on par with its standard applicant pool. (Although it feels psychologically friendlier to be one among 1,121 applications versus the record-breaking 10,351 for HBS’s standard track program.)

These ultra-competitive programs, in return, allow ambitious young students to lock in a seat in one of the world’s top business schools – such as Stanford GSB, Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth and Wharton – before pursuing a few years of real world professional experience. While most MBA programs expect students to spend about three to six years in the workforce before applying for business school, deferred admissions opportunities give candidates a guaranteed pathway to the MBA before having extensive career exposure.

Each institution has its own unique take on the ‘early career MBA’ experience. The Yale and HBS programs, for example, attract college seniors from a diverse array of colleges and countries, while Wharton’s newly launched program, the Moelis Advance Access Program, is a feeder program for Wharton undergrads only. Yale’s Silver Scholars Program is unique in funneling accepted students straight into its MBA after college graduation. These newly graduated undergrads spend year one in the core MBA curriculum, followed by a full-time internship (or two, or three) in year two, then return for a third year at Yale SOM to finish their degree. While the Silver Scholars started out targeting undergrads from Yale, it’s evolved to recruit from a worldwide talent pool. As former Deputy Director of Admissions & Senior Associate Director of Career Development at Yale SOM, I can attest to the unique experiences and wealth of knowledge Silver Scholars add to the b-school classroom, as well as how well these students fare in terms of receiving faculty support and creating incredible professional networks so early on in their career.

Wharton, like Yale, has crafted a custom cohort and program, while Harvard 2+2 and Stanford deferred enrollment aren’t separate from their traditional MBA programs. Stanford’s is “just an alternate route” to the traditional MBA, while HBS originally targeted STEM majors (60% of last year’s applicants came from STEM disciplines). Chicago Booth, like Stanford, offers two options for “early stage” talent, including the Chicago Business Fellows program, which targets fast track professionals with three years or less of work experience, and the Booth Scholars Program (its deferral option).

Here’s a look at the top deferred admissions MBA programs in terms of their similarities and differences.

Common characteristics among deferred programs:

• The promise of securing a seat in a highly prestigious MBA program while pursuing a few years of meaningful work experience
• Candidates are invited to apply in their final year of undergrad
• Ultracompetitive, as deferred programs have very small classes in terms of who they’re going to admit into their early career program
• Successful applicants tend to have exceptional academics, demonstrated leadership and unwavering passion
• Must complete the GMAT and jump through similar application hoops

Variations between programs relate to eligibility, composition, timing and opportunity:

• Yale Silver Scholars is a three-year experience; students complete a fulltime internship during their second year, then return to b-school (only current college seniors eligible).
• Wharton’s program is for Penn undergrads only, and candidates are considered for an annual fellowship of $10,000.
• HBS 2+2: graduate students who went straight from undergrad to master’s programs are also eligible to apply (i.e. haven’t held a fulltime work position).
• Stanford GSB offers both deferred and direct enrollment from undergrad, although it urges students to think about deferring for one to three years.
• Stanford applicants enrolled in medical or law graduate programs straight after undergrad are also eligible to apply.

While MIT Sloan has no official deferral program, it’s worth mentioning that its admissions FAQs state: “Our general policy is not to defer admission but we will consider requests for deferral on a case by case basis.” Meaning, it’s a bit more covert, but the deferred option exists.

Despite its benefits, the deferred admission MBA isn’t for everyone. If you’re still curious explore your options before homing in on a specific track – or a specific school – this niche path won’t be a fit. But if you’re inclined to commit to a top business school before jumping into the workforce, here are some tips for maximizing your chances of MBA admissions success:

Three Top Tips for Deferred Admission MBA Applicants:

1. 1. 1. Be crystal clear about your professional goals – know why you need the MBA to achieve your future aspirations and articulate a clear understanding of your longer-term career vision.
      2. Be prepared to make up for your lack of professional experience with proven leadership potential and exceptional extracurricular exploits. As one 2+2 grad posted on Quora, “Everyone is a leader in real life, not just on their resume. This leadership generally flows from the kind of obvious passion that you simply can’t fake.”
      3. Same goes for test scores and grades, which need to be noteworthy to demonstrate your potential and acumen in the absence of real world work experience. Take the time to prepare and practice for your GMAT exam, as well as to show your abilities in the classroom with related undergraduate coursework.

During my time at Yale, I observed two distinct profiles among the Silver Scholars. One was the individual whose sense of purpose and mission were evidenced by their actions. They had already managed to make an impact beyond the norm, innovating in their chosen industry, identifying needs, and willing to devote energy and time to pursuing their passion with unblinking focus. The other was the crazy smart wunderkind pursuing a career in business whose academic record and test scores spoke for themselves. These students knew what they wanted and saw the MBA as the fast track to getting there – as quickly as possible.

If this is resonating, and you can demonstrate a mix of early successes along with compelling reasoning for pursuing the MBA now, don’t miss exploring the unique opportunity afforded by the deferred admission MBA.

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Kristen Beyers is an Expert Coach at MBA consulting firm Fortuna Admissions, and former Yale SOM Deputy Director of Admissions & Senior Associate Director of Career Development. Fortuna is composed of former admissions directors and business school insiders from 13 of the top 15 business schools.

MORE FROM FORTUNA:  Mistakes To Avoid In Your MBA Application, Why You Should Consider An International MBA,  What MBA Admissions Really Want: Tips From Top Schools

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LGBT & Mainstream At IE Business School - Poets&Quants

IE photo

Drag queens and business schools rarely mix. But the annual LGBT@Work event at Madrid’s IE school is not your average business school bash. Among the speakers at this year’s event July 5 were the founder of a nonprofit that pushes for LGBT workplace rights, who described coming out while studying for the Presbyterian ministry in California and founding a group called Seminary Lesbians Under Theological Stress (check out that acronym). Another speaker represents the interests of the UN’s LGBT employees. One worked on both the Obama and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns. Another set up a lesbian networking group.

And the guy with the drag act? He’s an entrepreneur from Chicago, and calls his alter-ego Wendy City. He also openly touted for a Spanish husband from the stage. “Like all gay American men at the moment, I’d like a second passport,” he deadpanned. 

Other schools’ LGBT clubs might not all be as fun as IE’s, which was timed to coincide with Madrid’s famously bacchanalian Pride Weekend, but they are a standard part of modern business school life. That the sponsors of IE’s event included the likes of SalesForce, IBM, Google, and LinkedIn, and and that it received strong support from the school’s academic and other staff, shows that IE’s LGBT clubs are well and truly mainstream. This is undoubtedly a reflection of Spanish society: Spain was one of the first countries to legalize same-sex marriage, and Madrid in particular is LGBT-friendly. 

But it is important not to be complacent about the seeming ubiquity of LGBT clubs, or to assume that every school is as welcoming to LGBT people. Indeed, IE’s Out & Allies club might be thriving now, with 340 members, but just two years ago it had only eight. One big reason the Out & Allies club is thriving is its president, an energetic American woman called Michelle Raymond. 

B-SCHOOLS: HUBS FOR EMPOWERMENT AND CHANGE

Selisse Berry, founder, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, speaks at IE’s LBGT@Work event. Photo by Kerry Parke

Before taking an MBA at IE, Raymond worked on Wall Street. She’s also a singer-songwriter who has opened for Miley Cyrus. She says LGBT clubs are a necessary consequence of the way modern business schools work. “European schools are looking to bring in foreigners to pay the tuition fees, so diversity is baked into their business model. And once you have diversity, you need to manage it, which is where inclusion comes in,” she says. LGBT clubs are an important part of that. 

Business schools are very unusual kinds of communities, hubs where people jet in from all over the world for an intense year or two before scattering to the four corners of the globe again. By design, then, business schools are places where big changes can and do happen. Raymond explains that LGBT people from tolerant countries come out multiple times – every time they start a new job, for instance – and by the time they get to business school they are used to it. 

Additionally, many students who do not come from open cultures are able to come out for the first time at business school. Often, Raymond says, when they arrive they feel shocked that people are openly LGBT, but over time they become more relaxed in the liberal environment. “I have seen people from Saudi Arabia or India who join the club as allies, but later in the year feel comfortable enough to come out,” she says. 

While this is good to see, it can have a sad side, too, if people are compelled to go back to their home countries and then lose the freedom they have tasted. On the other hand, Raymond points out, they sometimes feel empowered to enact change in their own societies and businesses, to make life better for LGBT people. 

LGBT CLUBS: HELPING STUDENTS GET THE MOST OUT OF THER EDUCATION

Business school LGBT clubs can also be repositories of know-how, helping to send ripples out into the wider world. One attendee at IE’s LGBT@Work event was trying to set up an LGBT network in a blue-chip firm where, she said, not a single person had ever come out.

More immediately, LGBT clubs can also help students get the most of out of their education. IE’s club was set up in 2006 by Juan Pablo Ramirez and Jose de Isasa Fereres, because LGBT students who felt unable to come out to their peers had “a deficit of confidence and self-esteem,” as Ramirez puts it. The business school environment is a community, he adds, where students live together intensely for many months. “It is potentially a life-changing experience, but if students feel they cannot be themselves they will not be able to reap all the benefits,” Ramirez adds. 

Business school is also a competitive environment, and those who feel they have to hide a fundamental part of themselves are less competitive than those who were more comfortable, says Ramirez. If an LGBT club can help students flourish, it becomes a necessity, not a nice-to-have. 

Santiago Iñiguez, Executive President, IE University, speaks at the IE LGBT@Work event. Photo by Kerry Parke

It is important, many say, not to be complacent about the growth in LGBT clubs. Even as recently as 2006, there was significant resistance. “When we announced that IE would have an LGBT club there were some articles in the news, and a huge backlash. We launched a newsletter to the IE database and tons of people asked to be removed from the list,” de Isasa Fereres says. However, he and his co-founder were able to continue on their course because they were backed by the school. “They really believed in what we were doing,” de Isasa Fereres adds. (This might be slightly rose-tinted — not all IE staff supported the club at the start.)

Even today, not all schools are entirely comfortable with LGBT groups. Some clubs say that that administrators mysteriously lose the paperwork when asked to sign off their events. Others say that posters for events vanish from notice-boards. Not everybody embraces diversity. Since 2016, students at Barcelona’s IESE school, which is run by the Catholic Opus Dei group, have been trying to set up an LGBT club, so far without success

Early in 2018 a group of LGBT students at IESE sent a petition to students and alumni asking for the school to give way. Although it gained over 500 signatures the official line remains that IESE has a ban on clubs related to personal identity, which covers religion, politics, or sexual identity. Clearly, there is a tension between the diverse student body and generally liberal teaching staff, and the deeply conservative views of the people who run the school. “They have always tried to keep this under the radar, because obviously it is an issue when you are trying to attract a diverse range of students,” says Matthew Gardiner, one of the students behind the petition.

The school has engaged, says Gardiner, “but the progress has been painfully slow.” Having an official club matters because it would help attract sponsors for events, and allows the school to be at the start-of-year club fair. “That would confer legitimacy on the club, and send out the message to LGBT students who have been closeted that it is okay to be out here. Some people still fear that it will harm their prospects. I don’t think that is true, but an official club would clearly signal it,” Gardiner says.  IESE say that they are considering the request, but want to ensure that “the professional character of the clubs is preserved.”

LESS ACTIVISM, MORE NETWORKING

That language might seem a little po-faced, when faced with the slightly raucous feel of IE’s club, but it is perhaps a good indicator of how LGBT clubs will develop. As LGBT people gain legal protection and social acceptance, so the need for campaigning clubs to increase the visibility of LGBT people decreases. But another kind of club might develop in its place. When Javier Arias Brenes arrived at Nyenrode Business School in the Netherlands from Costa Rica to take his MBA in 2012 — a move they made specifically because he and his partner would have more legal protection than in their native country — the school had no LGBT organization. “In the Netherlands they have passed the point where the clubs are vital. As an LGBT student, you are just another student,” he says. 

However, Brenes realized that some LGBT students might benefit from a club. “I thought that, as there is a community of LGBT students and alumni, we could connect them in more of a business network,” says Arias Brenes, who is now the Nyenrode MBA program’s community and marketing manager. Just as people with an interest in entrepreneurship or the automotive industry might get together to share experiences and network, so LGBT people can too. 

“There is no need for activism, but I see especially with younger students who are still discovering themselves but don’t necessarily feel comfortable, the openness of these meetings can be a positive experience for them,” Arias Brenes adds. Also, talking to people who went through the social changes of the 70s and 80s might have lessons for young people who might be facing the same challenges they did, in their home countries, businesses or private lives, now.

‘JUST ANOTHER WAY TO CONNECT TO PEOPLE’

David Ehrich, who attended Tuck business school in the late 1990s, says that he put off business school for a decade because he didn’t feel that he would be safe there, and that the sorts of firms that recruited from business schools wouldn’t hire an openly gay man anyway. While at Tuck, he helped create an informal network of LGBT people because, he says, “the whole point about business school is networking, and you should leverage them wherever you can — whether it’s drinking whisky, fly-fishing, or being LGBT.” Creating an LGBT club is “just another way to connect to people,” he says. 

Times have changed, in the US at least. Now even business schools run by the most conservative groups have LGBT groups. For schools that pride themselves on attracting the brightest and best, it makes sense, because having a visible LGBT club can help with recruitment. It might not be acceptable to ask people if they are LGBT, so one way to increase the chances that your student cohort is diverse is to have a very visible club. “It is a way for institutions to signal to candidates that this is a safe place, and one where they should want to come. Not having one is a really important statement,” Ehrich says. 

Are LGBT clubs really necessary these days? Yes. For a start, they can help students from conservative cultures to be themselves and make the most of their education. And they offer an opportunity to network, which no sensible student ever turns down. Also, they are a very clear signal from a school that it values diversity, and are a mechanism for recruiting LGBT students. Finally, in these febrile times, the degree of enthusiasm a school shows for its LGBT club is a clear sign of its fundamental values. 

All the speakers, from left to right: Luisa Ercoli, Global Diversity & Inclusion Manager, Barilla; Selisse Berry, Founder, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates; Marijn Pijnenburg: Global Business Development Executive IBM (Sponsor); Pedro Pina, VP Global Client & Agency Solutions, Google; Joel Brown, Esq., CLC, Chief Visionary Officer, Pneumos LLC; Charles Myers, Chairman, Signum Global Advisors; Marta Fernández Herraiz, Founder & Co-Director General, LesWorking & REDI; Richard Sypniewski, CEO & Managing Director, SAGIN, LLC; and Hyung Hak Nam, President of UN-GLOBE, United Nations. Photo by Kerry Parke

DON’T MISS ELITE LGBT MBAs AT ALL-TIME HIGH and THE BIG PICTURE: CHINA, SHANGHAI & CEIBS

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B-School Bulletin: Spanx Founder: Start Small, Think Big, Scale Fast - Poets&Quants

CAT Test Centres 2018 - Jagran Josh

Last year the CAT Test Centres were increased to 140 from the 138 . IIM Lucknow followed the general tradition of expanding the number of test cities where CAT 2017 MBA entrance test took place. In 2016, the CAT exam was conducted in 138 cities whereas in 2015 the number of CAT test cities stood at 136.

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CAT 2018 Admit Card - Jagran Josh

CAT Admit Card for the biggest MBA entrance exam of the country will be made available from October 24, 2018, onwards. As per the reports, MBA aspirants can expect the CAT 2018 Admit Card to be available online for download from 1 PM onwards in the afternoon. The Admit Card for Common Admission Test (CAT) is a must have document for MBA aspirants who are seeking admission to MBA programmes at the top MBA colleges in India such as IIMs.

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MBA Application Essays Part 2 – Why Our School? and What Will You Contribute? Essays - Poets&Quants

In the first article in this series, MBA Prep School  discussed essay questions that had to do with your career progress and career goals. The next two questions we’ll discuss also dovetail with one another.  A “Why Our School?” essay question is a chance to tell the admissions committee what their program has to offer you.  The “Contributions Essay” is your opportunity to inform admissions officers what you will offer their class and community in return.

Why Our School? Essays

MBA admissions committees are very fond of asking you to tell them why you are applying to their school. MBA applicants are well aware of the stiff competition they face for admission to elite business schools, but they may not realize how hard MBA programs are competing to convince the best applicants to attend their schools. This is why an applicant’s answer to the Why Our School? question is a crucial way for admissions officers to separate the most engaged applicants from those who display only a superficial interest in attending their program. It follows that the quality of your answer to this essay question may have a significant bearing on your odds of being accepted.

Here are a couple of Why Our School? essay questions from the current application season:

Stanford Essay B: Why Stanford?

Wharton Essay 1: What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA?

The “Why Our School?” question might be asked in a few other forms, including:

• Why do you need an MBA from our program?
• How do you think that our school can prepare you for your career goals?
• How will our program enable your personal and professional growth?

The best answers to these types of questions are both personal and specific.  They are personal because they cover the unique challenges that you need to prepare for in the future. They are specific because they draw distinct connections between your motivations for an MBA and the particular resources that each business school has to offer you.

Answering the “Why Our School?” question requires thoughtful research and doing more legwork than your competition. Whereas other applicants browse the school’s website and think that’s sufficient, you must endeavor to understand each school on a deeper level. Before you begin your research, decide what you’re looking for in an MBA program and then figure out how the unique resources of each of your target schools check those boxes for you.

Contributions to the Class Essays

At the best business schools, there are always more qualified candidates vying for admission than there are seats in the class. As a result, the admissions committee awards the open seats to the candidates they believe will add the most to their MBA community.

Here is an example of a Contributions essay question from the current application season:

Wharton Essay 2: Describe an impactful experience or accomplishment that is not reflected elsewhere in your application. How will you use what you learned through that experience to contribute to the Wharton community?

You might see other forms of Contributions essay questions, such as:

• What can you contribute to our program?
• How can you enrich next year’s class?
• How will your past experiences, values, and academic background be of value to your future classmates

The important thing to understand when preparing to answer these kinds of questions is that concrete answers about what you can contribute to the program are very important. The schools are looking for candidates who will put in just as much as they take out.

The key to scoring top marks is to be both concrete and specific. Too many candidates answer this question with vague generalities: “I’ll be a student leader” or “I can offer a diverse perspective.”  We don’t mean to imply that you can’t talk about softer skills or qualitative reasons. The point is that you must clarify how those attributes and your novel life experiences would be of benefit to your classmates. Don’t expect the admissions officers to do the heavy lifting to figure out what you can offer next year’s class; instead, tell them explicitly how you plan to contribute, and you will increase your chances of gaining a spot in their program.

In the next installment of MBA Prep School’s Essay Writing Boot Camp series, we’ll discuss three additional frequently-asked MBA essay questions that you may encounter during your MBA application campaign.

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If you are enjoying these Essay Writing Boot Camp articles, then you will want to take advantage of MBA Prep School’s  advanced course on MBA application essay writing. 

Learn from MBA essay experts as they break down the most popular MBA application essay questions, provide outlining templates, and showcase high-quality essay sample response. A scoring chart accompanies each course, which you can use to determine whether your application essays are as effective as possible.

For a limited time, MBA Prep School’s Essay Professor course is free to Poets&Quants readers. Follow this link to sign up and learn how to write essays that will impress admissions officers at the top business schools: MBA Prep School’s Essay Professor Course.

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Tyler Cormney  is the co-founder of MBA Prep School, a full-service, boutique MBA admissions consulting firm that specializes in helping aspiring MBA candidates realize their dream of attending an elite business school. As a graduate of both Harvard Business School and USC’s Professional Writing Program, Tyler draws upon his unique blend of creative writing, strategic thinking, and coaching skills to help applicants stand out from the competition for a place in the most selective MBA programs, including Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton.

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2018-2019 MBA Admissions Events: A School-By-School Listing - Poets&Quants

Forget the beaches, barbecues, sunshine, and shorts. Come August, if you work in MBA admissions, it’s time to hit the road. With the first round around the corner, the process starts getting serious. That means adcoms and applicants alike will be fixing their smiles, practicing their handshakes, and sharpening their pitches.

These events go by many names: socials, showcases, fairs, forums, chats, and conferences. From Ottawa to Lima to Kampala, this is a chance for applicants to go one-on-one with deans, adcoms and alumni – the very people who can champion their cause. Here, candidates can become more than one of the dozen essays read in a day. Face-to-face, they are unforgettable dreamers and catalysts whom decision-makers can picture enriching their communities. Such applicants are harder to reject – or waitlist, for that matter.

Where will the top business schools be this year? Collectively, you’ll find them together at Forté Forums or The CenteCourt MBA Festival in seven cities in September alone this year, from San Francisco to New York. More intimately, you can enjoy meet-and-greets at information sessions, alumni-hosted panels, coffee chats, webinars, campus visit days, or dinners targeting populations like veterans and women. In short, you can interact with schools in almost every conceivable venue, whether you want to learn more about student life or how to make your application more competitive.

Want to know the next time Harvard Business School comes to Dallas or INSEAD to Bangalore? Got a layover in Chicago and wondering when Kellogg holds campus tours? Below, you’ll find links to over 50 school sites featuring the dates, start times, locations, agendas, and registration for all of the events they’ve scheduled for the coming year so far, including upcoming CentreCourt events sponsored by Poets&Quants. At CentreCourt in New York on Sept. 22, you can experience a master class taught by Harvard Business School Professor Mihir Desai. At CentreCourt in San Francisco on Sept. 6, you can hear and meet Kirsten Moss, assistant dean and director of MBA admissions and financial aid for Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

To find out when your favorite schools will be in your area, click on the “Upcoming Events” links below.

U.S. MBA Programs: Admissions Events

Rank and School	School Recruitment Events
Harvard Business School	Upcoming Events
Stanford GSB	Upcoming Events
Chicago (Booth)	Upcoming Events
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)	Upcoming Events
Northwestern University (Kellogg)	Upcoming Events
Columbia Business School	Upcoming Events
MIT (Sloan)	Upcoming Events
UC-Berkeley (Haas)	Upcoming Events
Dartmouth College (Tuck)	Upcoming Events
Yale School of Management	Upcoming Events
Duke University (Fuqua)	Upcoming Events
University of Virginia (Darden)	Upcoming Events
University of Michigan (Ross)	Upcoming Events
Cornell (Johnson)	Upcoming Events
UCLA (Anderson)	Upcoming Events
New York (Stern)	Upcoming Events
North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler)	Upcoming Events
University of Texas (McCombs)	Upcoming Events
Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)	Upcoming Events
Emory University (Goizueta)	Upcoming Events
Indiana University (Kelley)	Upcoming Events
University of Washington (Foster)	Upcoming Events
Washington University (Olin)	Upcoming Events
Georgetown (McDonough)	Upcoming Events
Notre Dame (Mendoza)	Upcoming Events
Michigan State (Broad)	Upcoming Events
USC (Marshall)	Upcoming Events
Rice (Jones)	Upcoming Events
Vanderbilt University (Owen)	Upcoming Events
Minnesota (Carlson)	Upcoming Events
Ohio State (Fisher)	Upcoming Events
University of Wisconsin	Upcoming Events
Penn State (Smeal)	Upcoming Events
Georgia Tech (Scheller)	Upcoming Events
University of Maryland (Smith)	Upcoming Events

International MBA Programs: Admissions Events

Rank and School	School Recruitment Events
INSEAD	Upcoming Events
London Business School	Upcoming Events
IESE Business School	Upcoming Events
IE Business School	Upcoming Events
HEC Paris	Upcoming Events
IMD	Upcoming Events
Cambridge Judge Business School	Upcoming Events
ESADE	Upcoming Events
SDA Bocconi	Upcoming Events
Oxford Saïd	Upcoming Events

DON’T MISS: REGISTER FOR FREE TO ATTEND THE CENTRECOURT MBA FESTIVAL or 2018-2019 MBA APPLICATION DEADLINES

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Can This 750 GMAT Military Man Get In? - Poets&Quants

He’s a West Point grad who will have spent eight years on active duty by the time he matriculates to a business school. Currently a company commander, he manages 85 officers and contractors who serve as instructors for pilots at the Apache helicopter flight school. He also has been a battalion operations officer, a role that saw him plan and coordinate training for more than 600 soldiers.

His basic stats are stellar: A 4.11 undergraduate GPA at the U.S. Military Academy where he graduated third in his class of 1,083 cadets and majored in economics and minored in applied statistics and a 750 GMAT score. He’s aiming high: Harvard, Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, and UT-Austin McCombs School of Business.

What are his chances and what can he do to improve them to stand out of the pile of applicants at those schools? In this Friday’s With Sandy episode, HBSGuru.com Founder Sandy Kreisberg gives a candid assessment.

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New MBA Grads Are Wealthier – and Less Happy - Poets&Quants

New MBA Grads Are Wealthier – and Less Happy

The good news: Recent MBA grads are making more than previous grads. The bad news: They are also more dissatisfied with their job offers.

Let’s start with the positive. 46% of newly minted MBA grads have had job offers for $125,000 or more, according to a new survey from Training the Street, a provider of educational courses.

The main reason behind the increase in salary? A strong competition for MBA talent, says Scott Rostan, founder and CEO of Training the Street.

“When you’re getting three, four offers from banks, and if you just do the math and think about that, that means a lot of firms are competing for the same people and the same talent,” Rostan tells CNBC. “If you’re a talented person, you’re going to be in high demand.”

Satisfaction rates

It gets better. More MBA students, roughly 28%, report receiving three or more job offers. When compared to last year’s 22%, it seems newly-minted MBA grads are getting more options. And more than half of students surveyed this year are “very satisfied” with their offers.

Despite the pay and offers, there is signs for worry. When compared to last year’s 45% satisfaction rate, the number of MBA students who report being satisfied with their job offers fell to 32%. Worse still, students who reported being dissatisfied with their offers has doubled from last year to 14%.

Like last year, the number of grads who report not receiving any employment offers has remained roughly the same at 17%.

So, what could these numbers mean? Well, according to Rostan, the increase in job offers means MBAs are in high demand. But that also means more competition.

“The war for talent is as strong as ever, and top candidates are in high demand, leading to higher starting salaries and multiple job offers,” Rostan tells PR Newswire. “Demand for MBAs remains strong, but firms are being more discerning in an effort to recruit those who can step in and contribute right away.”

Industry Preference

A large percentage of MBA grads reported a preference for working in consulting according to Training the Street. Roughly 31% of grads put working in consulting as their number one job choice. Last year, the number was 20%.

Part of the reason for consulting’s popularity may be the result of heavy recruitment efforts by consulting firms. 51% of respondents surveyed said consulting firms “actively recruited” them for employment. That’s up from 43% last year.

“We’ve seen a concerted effort on behalf of the big consulting firms to attract the strongest, young talent coming out of the nation’s business schools,” Rostan tells PR Newswire. “The results indicate that their efforts have paid off, as more MBAs see consulting firms as their top choice.”

Training the Street’s survey included a total of 262 students. 158 were full-time MBAs.

Sources: CNBC, Training The Street, PR Newswire

How To Approach Short-Answer Essays

When it comes to the MBA short-answer essays, many applicants find word limits to be challenging.

Yet, experts say having tight word limits pushes applicants to effectively convey how they will contribute to an MBA class.

Ilana Kowarski, a reporter at US News, recently spoke to some experts on how applicants can pack more punch into MBA short-answer essays.

“You really do have to think about what are the must-communicates versus the nice-to-communicates,” Isser Gallogly, associate dean of MBA admissions and program innovation at New York University’s Stern School of Business, tells US News.

NYU Stern’s “Pick Six”

One example of a short-answer essay prompt is NYU’s Stern, the “Pick Six” essay. The prompt asks applicants to use six images and corresponding captions to describe themselves to the admissions committee and future classmates.

According to NYU’s website, applicants upload a PDF that includes:

• A brief introduction or overview of your “Pick Six”
• Six images that help illustrate who you are
• A one-sentence caption for each of the six images that helps explain why they were selected and are significant to you.

Keep True To Yourself

The key to answering these essay prompts is being authentic and highlighting individuality, experts say. It’s also an opportunity to convey a side of yourself outside of a transcript or resume.

For instance, Stern MBA student Sebastian Hooker took a photograph of himself exploring an ice cave for his “Pick Six” essay. His intent was to convey his appreciation of nature and “Work Hard, Play Hard” mentality.

Hooker, who grew up in Utah, tells US News that he wanted to make clear to NYU that if he were to attend school in NYC, he’d continue pursuing his outdoor hobbies—a core part of his identity.

“I’m not going to move to the concrete jungle and become a 100 percent city-driven person,” he tells US News.

Ben Strickhouser, an MBA student at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, says it’s important to stay true to yourself when writing short-answer essays.

“You want to be authentic in the way that you answer the question, so most likely the first thing that comes to mind whenever you read this question is what you want to put, and then you just need to spend a little bit of time to make sure that it’s put in an eloquent way,” Strickhouser tells US News.

Sources: US News, NYU Stern

These Professors Want To Make B-School Research Relevant

Let’s say you’re a business manager and you’re having a problem with evaluating employee performance.

The last thing you’re probably going to do in solving the problem is read an academic journal.

Debra L. Shapiro, a professor of management in the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and Bradley Kirkman, a professor of leadership and department head in the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University, call this the “Lost in Translation” problem.

In their article for the Harvard Business Review, Shapiro and Kirkman argue that business schools need to take a broader approach to assessing what it means to have scholarly impact.

Two Main Challenges

Shapiro and Kirkman cite two main challenges that management scientists face in producing research knowledge that is both “academically rigorous and applicable to practicing managers.”

As noted previously, the “Lost in Translation” problem is simply the fact that no practicing managers turn to academic journals when they’re looking to improve their skills or practices.

“Researchers have found that managers tend to be unaware of research-supported management insights reported in academic journals, and that such insights are typically excluded in practitioner-oriented journals,” Shapiro and Kirkman write.

For instance, it’s common for managers to often believe in “long-held assumed truths” that academic scholars have already dispelled in their research.

“For example, many managers still believe that the errors they make in evaluating their employees can be corrected by training them to recognize the potential errors and suggesting ways to avoid them, while the actual evidence shows that such training can actually increase the number of errors they make,” Shapiro and Kirkman explain.

The second challenge management scientists face, according to Shapiro and Kirkman, is the “Lost Before Translation” problem.

In their words, it’s the “tendency for academic researchers to design studies without input from managers or employees — the populations that their studies’ results are meant to help.”

These two challenges, Shapiro and Kirkman argue, are what keep academics from truly helping practitioners improve the way the manage.

Certain Promotion and Salary Incentive Practices May Inhibit Research Reach

Shapiro and Kirkman cite the way business schools offer promotions and salary increases as a main inhibitor to making research relevant to practitioners.

“This is because promotions and salary increases at most business schools are primarily based on professors’ number of peer-reviewed, ‘A’ journal publications (or those appearing in journals with the highest impact factor, or frequency of citation-counts),” Shapiro and Kirkman write.

In turn, this type of promotion practice limits the publication outlets that researchers will seek out.

“Counting solely or primarily ‘A’ journal publications when determining rewards, recognitions, and other career advancement-prizes communicates, in essence, that professors won’t advance if they choose to publish in outlets that are more widely read by managers,” Shapiro and Kirkman argue.

Having this practice at business schools, consequently, produces a number of issues such as weakening professors’ ability to pursue activities that “engage scholarship,” incentivizing scholars to produce as many studies as possible without careful consideration of research, and encouraging academics to engage in “questionably ethical” research practices to produce results accepted by certain journals.

Changing How Academics Influences Practice

Shapiro and Kirkman offer three main changes that they say business schools should account for to assess what it means to have scholarly impact.

For one, they believe that business schools should take a “pluralistic approach to scholarly impact.”

“For example, rather than counting up the number of times a professor’s articles have been cited by other academics, we should also be looking at how often the work is cited or used by students, practicing managers, policy-makers, and in articles (e.g., news, periodicals, magazines, podcasts, etc.) that are mass-distributed to these multiple stakeholders,” Shapiro and Kirkman write.

Secondly, they argue that academics should focus on “responsible research.”

“Responsible research has been described as research that balances the interests of shareholders with the social and economic outcomes of companies, uses rigorous research methods to understand puzzling local phenomena, and seeks truth above all else by using ethical research methods,” Shapiro and Kirkman write.

Lastly, they call for all stakeholders—from researchers to journal editors—to work together in a “concerted way to encourage and reward responsible research and move beyond the limited approaches to conducting and disseminating management research that are currently used.”

The results, if these changes are implemented, are plentiful.

“Scholars will use their voice in ways that go beyond merely publishing in top-tier academic journals with very limited practitioner readership; there will be less incentive to engage in questionably ethical research practices, such as only putting their best research findings forward and hiding non-significant findings; and perhaps most importantly, it will lead to more interest in, and perceived legitimacy of, management scholars’ work,” Shapiro and Kirkman write.

Sources: Harvard Business Review, Academy of Management

 

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Trade War Could Spell Disaster For U.S. B-Schools - Poets&Quants

UPenn Wharton photo

It is hard to find potential winners in Donald Trump’s nascent trade war with China. But could European business schools be the beneficiaries? Some suspect so.  

So far, the U.S. president has slapped tariffs on Chinese imports to the U.S. worth $200 billion a year, and China has reciprocated for some American imports. But because the U.S. has a trade surplus with the Asian country, China will at some point run out of U.S. imports to tax, and might have to look for other ways to fight back. 

One Chinese import that is a big deal for the U.S.: students, especially in the lucrative business education sector. “One option would be for the Chinese to ban students from going to American business schools,” an academic at a European business school recently suggested to Poets&Quants. “That would be very interesting for us.” 

RESTRICTIONS ON STUDENTS GOING TO U.S. ‘WOULD CERTAINLY HARM U.S. B-SCHOOLS’

Any ban by China on students going to the U.S. would have a big impact on American education providers. In 2016-2017, over 350,000 Chinese students sought higher education in the U.S., up from just 68,000 in 2006-2007, according to the Institute of International Education, a U.S. government-funded nonprofit. Of the 350,000, 142,851 were undergraduates, 128,320 were postgraduates, and 80,000 were taking non-degree courses. Around 10,000 Chinese students are estimated to be seeking an MBA in the U.S., though many more are seeking specialist master’s degrees. 

As we wrote last year, China is financially very important to U.S. business schools. “Without China, many business schools in the U.S. would have been in trouble in terms of meeting their enrollment goals (in recent years),” Rahul Choudaha, co-founder of data analytics website DrEducation, said. “China is too important and too big for business schools to ignore.” If the U.S. lost all that tuition and fees, not to mention the extra costs associated with housing and other spending, it could add up to a significant cost: If schools had to fill their classes with students from elsewhere, it would — at the very least — create a costly administrative headache. 

Dean Bill Boulding of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University agrees that a ban by China on students studying in the U.S. would be an effective weapon. “Just as tariffs reduce mobility of goods across countries, so, too, we could see immigration restrictions that reduce the mobility of students across countries. If China and the U.S. took actions to increase these restrictions it would certainly harm U.S. business schools,” he says. 

CHINA DOESN’T WANT TO CLOSE DOOR TO TOP EDUCATION FOR ITS PEOPLE

Professor George Yip. World Economic Forum photo

However, such a ban would likely face domestic hurdles in China. Professor George Yip of Harvard Business School, CEIBS in Shanghai, and London’s Imperial College Business School is unsure that the Chinese government would be willing to block elite students from going to the U.S.. “There are children of the wealthiest and most important people in China,” he says, “and the government would not want to prevent their children going to top-class institutions.” 

Those who have set their hearts on sending children to Yale or Harvard would not be pleased if they were blocked from doing so — though as Yip points out, Chinese Premier Xi Jingping has consolidated power so effectively that if he wanted to effect a ban, he probably has the political capital to do it. 

The beneficiaries are obvious. According to Nick Barniville, associate dean of degree programs at ESMT Berlin, “For good European schools, this would be a chance to improve quality by having a greater pool of really good Chinese candidates from which to select, assuming these candidates would have otherwise gone to top-10 U.S. schools. A huge increase in the volume of students coming to Europe, Barniville says, might not affect MBA programs as much as others, at least at the leading U.S. schools , as these institutions already have more than enough candidates. But it’s not hard to imagine schools moving quickly to take advantage of such an increase. 

‘REALLY HARD TO MAKE ANY PREDICTIONS IN TODAY’S POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT’

Might China really do it? Perhaps more likely than a blanket ban is a reduction in the number of Chinese students heading to lower-level U.S. institutions. American schools might want to brace themselves for a slowdown anyway: A recent article in South China Morning Post suggested that Chinese hunger for U.S. education is starting to wane, partly because some students are put off by news of school shootings and a perceived unfriendliness to foreigners.

In that environment, a ban might be easier to sell to Chinese students with their hearts set on the U.S. 

Stranger things have happened — and are happening, as Fuqua Dean Bill Boulding says. “It’s really hard to make any predictions in today’s political environment.”

DON’T MISS CEIBS OFFERS BOOTCAMPERS ENTRY INTO VAST CHINA BUSINESS LANDSCAPE and THE BIG PICTURE: CHINA, SHANGHAI & CEIBS

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Applying To Business School? Don’t Forget To Network - Poets&Quants

MBA applicants are often surprised by the unwritten rules surrounding MBA admissions, including the importance of building personal connections when you are applying to business school. Here are some tips that will help you network correctly:

• Understand Why Networking Matters.

Networking is an important tool for MBA applicants.  Done correctly, conversations with current students, alums and administrators can really enhance your candidacy. As a former Tuck Admissions Officer, North Star Admissions founder, Karen Marks,  can absolutely tell you that the admissions committee considers personal interactions with applicants – both good and bad.

• Reach Out.

Don’t feel like you need to know people who have gone to your target schools in order to network. It’s really easy to reach out to community members through the schools themselves – many have formal programs that will connect you with people to talk to, and most schools publish the names and contact information of club and affinity group leaders, who expect to hear from prospective students. Don’t be shy, utilize these great resources.

• Go to Events.

Sign up for information about coffee chats, receptions, and on campus events. Go to as many as you can, and take advantage of the opportunity to build organic relationships, learn more about the school and demonstrate interest.

• Be Polite.

This might seem obvious, but being polite doesn’t come naturally to everyone. If you are negative, pushy or grossly uninformed it can actually backfire. Also, don’t overstep boundaries – This includes not asking people who you just met to edit your essays or recommend you.

• Don’t Forget Your Fellow Applicants.

Other candidates can be a wealth of information. Pool your information about applications, logistics, and school cultures. It makes the process more enjoyable, you are likely to learn useful things and also to meet these people again. The business school world is pretty small.

• Follow Up.

Be sure to thank people who help you. Again, the MBA world is pretty small, and you never know who might end up being on the hiring committee for your summer internship – or a fellow alumni.

 

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 Karen has more than 12 years of experience evaluating candidates for admission to Dartmouth College and to the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Since founding North Star Admissions Consulting in 2012, she has helped applicants gain admission to the nation’s top schools, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Wharton, MIT, Tuck, Columbia, Kellogg, Booth, Haas, Duke, Johnson, Ross, NYU, UNC, UCLA, Georgetown and more. Over the last three years, clients have been awarded more than 14.6 million dollars in scholarships, and more than 95% have gotten into one of their top choice schools.

MORE FROM KAREN: Should You Take The GMAT Or GRE?, Why you should visit business schools before you apply, MBA Application Mistakes

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Prof Wins $1.25 Million From Columbia & B-School Professor Geert Bekaert - Poets&Quants

Enrichetta Ravina, denied tenure at Columbia Business School, was awarded $1.25 million in damages after a jury found senior professor Geert Bekaert guilty of retaliation

A federal jury awarded former Columbia Business School Assistant Professor Enricheeta Ravina $1.25 million in damages in a highly publicized sexual harassment and retaliation trial that lasted more than two weeks in U.S. District Court in New York.

The award falls far short of the more than $30 million Ravina was seeking and follows a highly contentious dispute by lawyers in the case about what the untenured professor would be able to say in front of jurors hearing the damages portion of the case. Among other things, Ravina suggested that Columbia’s decision not to give her tenure would likely mean she will end up at a business school ranked 30th to 40th, a fate she contended would greatly diminish future opportunities in pay, retirement income, consulting, directorships on boards, and even a possible stake in an early stage company in exchange for advisory work.

The back-and-forth among the lawyers and judge that preceded the award provides a fascinating glimpse of life in academia at a top business school, including conversations about housing allowances for Columbia and NYU Stern professors, mortgage support for professors at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, and estimates that consulting work for Ravina would have been worth as much as $800 an hour, or $500,000 a year, and directorships would have earned her $8.6 million over her lifetime,  if only she had been granted tenure at a top ten business school.

$750K IN COMPENSATORY DAMAGES & $500K IN PUNITIVE DAMAGES AWARDED

A jury found Finance Professor Geert Baekert retaliated against his former mentee

The jury awarded Ravina, now a visiting professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, $750,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages. Columbia University and finance Professor Geert Bekaert, who she had accused of sexually harassing her and then retaliating when she rebuffed his overtures, are liable for compensatory damages. Bekaert is also liable for $500,000 in punitive damages. Under the New York City Human Rights Law, the university is responsible for acts of retaliation committed by its employees.

The award is a mere fraction of the more than $30 million Ravina sought, but the jury only found in her favor only on a retaliation charge. They did not agree that she was a victim of sexual harassment or gender discrimination, a finding that would have likely resulted in a substantially larger damage award (see Columbia Business School Prof Found Guilty Of Retaliation In Explosive #MeToo Case).

Regardless, the monetary damages likely pale the reputational damage to the university and its business school from a series of highly embarrassing disclosures during the trial. Among other things, the university’s former director of Equal Opportunity & Affirmative Action (EOAA) revealed that he had personally conducted four separate harassment investigations at the business school in a single year, all involving male professors accused of harassment by female faculty or students. In one case, a professor at the business school was alleged to have had consensual sex in his office on campus with a female MBA student. It also was disclosed that two months before Ravina brought her concerns to the university, the EOAA office had completed a review of another harassment complaint against Bekaert by a female MBA student who decided not to pursue the case after she had been threatened with retaliation by Bekaert. The dean’s office said it had been unaware of this previous complaint.

‘THE DAMAGES SHOULD SEND A CLEAR MESSAGE TO COLUMBIA’

The trial revealed a serious split in the faculty ranks at the business school, with many senior tenured faculty in the finance and economics division siding with Ravina against Bekaert, the school and the university. Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard called the faculty dispute “a soap opera,” despite the serious nature of the complaints by Ravina, and failed to follow up on his own recommendation that Bekaert be given one-on-one Title IX training (see CBS Dean Calls Faculty Dispute ‘A Soap Opera). Instead, Bekaert was sent to a one-to-two hour session on professional communications.

The damages award by the four-woman, four-man jury came after the jurors found yesterday that Bekaert,  Ravina’s senior colleague and mentor at Columbia Business School, retaliated against her after she alleged to Columbia that he was stalling their work on research projects and that he had been sexually harassing her for more than two years. By delaying his work on the research, Ravina charged, he effectively ruined her chances of gaining the publications she needed to obtain tenure.

“The $1.25 million in damages in this case should send a clear message to Columbia University and the world of higher education that workplace retaliation and abuse of power in academia will not be tolerated,” said Ravina attorney David Sanford of Sanford Heisler Sharp in a statement. “We are gratified that the jury recognized the damage done to Professor Ravina’s career by Columbia University and Professor Geert Bekaert. Throughout Professor Ravina’s long ordeal, Columbia chose to ignore her concerns and turned a blind eye to Bekaert’s retaliatory behavior.”

WHAT’S A BUSINESS SCHOOL ACADEMIC WORTH? DOES IT REALLY DEPEND ON A RANKING?

While the award had to be disappointing to Ravina and her attorneys, the discussion that preceded the jury’s return to hear the damages portion of the trial had to be equally frustrating. In a deposition given by Ravina immediately after the jury’s verdict yesterday, the professor suggested that her earnings potential would be severely impacted by Columbia’s decision to deny her tenure in 2016. She said that it was common knowledge in the field that if you don’t get tenure at a top ten school, you have to look at a lower school, probably one ranked in the 30 to 40 range by U.S. News.

That would mean, she testified, that her salary and retirement benefits would be reduced along with the opportunities she would have to do litigation consulting, corporate consulting, and directorships. Ravina believed that as a tenured professor at Columbia Business School she would have been making $800 an hour and up to $500,000 a year in additional income. She also believed that she would lose an opportunity to earn a stake in a startup or early stage company in exchange of her advisory work. Such a stake, Ravina said, could be worth a .1 percent ownership interest in a company worth $2 billion or more. Raving estimated that lost directorships, citing Italian-born professors who have had board seats at Italian Telecom and Unibank, could be worth $8.6 million over her lifetime.

Edward Hernstadt, the attorney representing Bekaert, took strong issue with her statements on lost opportunities as a result of the retaliation finding by the jury. He argued that her estimates were merely based on conversations with a few colleagues, a look at the CVs of professors, and an online search of salaries for professors at business schools ranked 30th to 40th.

Columbia Business School

HER DAMAGE ESTIMATES ARE ‘GUESSWORK’

“She did no rigorous study to determine how many people got outside consulting, how many tenured professors had outside consulting jobs,” Hernstadt told the judge. “She guessed 50%, 60%. She named a couple of individuals that she had heard from that had consulting (work). She doesn’t know what they charged. She doesn’t know how they get the jobs. She doesn’t know why they get the jobs. It’s all guesswork..We know that the activity reports of Columbia professors show that four tenured finance professors consult. This is a department of 35 people who have tenure. Not 50%, not 60%.”

Countered Alexandra Harwin, who also represented Ravina, “She has been in the academic world for a long time. She’s also been involved in recruiting. As part of being an academic, that is something that is part of the fabric of every day life. People are talking all the time about going to… they have the directorship meeting today. They’re going over to this company for consulting. They’re teaching next week at this company. I am away next week because I’m teaching in this place. This is something that it’s not one conversation. This is the life of academics.”

Hernstadt, attempting to rein in testimony that could lead a jury to award more money in damages, wasn’t buying it. “She’s clearly not an expert,” he claimed. “She has no experience of any kind with litigation consulting, corporate consulting, outside directorships. Even calculating her front pay, the mathematics of that, she’s more than qualified to do. But the selection of her decision to select schools from the ranked 30 to 40 in U.S. News and World Report…she’s not an expert in making those sort of decisions. And then the way she did it is incredibly flawed.

A .1% STAKE IN A STARTUP THAT COULD BE WORTH $2 BILLION OR MORE

“She would earn all of this stuff starting in 2020? So starting in 2020, she’s going to have two directorships with 16 board meetings in Italy. She’s going to be working 60 hours a year on litigation consulting. She is going to be working for a startup. Who knows what the time involvement is to get a .1 percent equity stake in that company. She is going to be doing external teaching. There is no basis for anything. To say this is a possible opportunity is one thing. To put a dollar figure or any kind of actual number on any of this is….

“Witness the $8.6 million she is seeking for directorship. She has no experience at all in that world. She knows nothing about what these extrernal companies in the real world look for, what they base decisions on, and what  qualifications they think are necessary. I think we all know when it comes to litigation consulting, if you are going to hire someone as a litigation consultant and possible expert witness, you’re looking for the biggest, best, strongest resume that you can get.  You want someone who wrote the book on the subject matter or wrote a dozen top articles on the subject matter. You are not  going to take someone who just made full professor and has a handful of articles. Professor Ravina has no experience in that world.”

“She is in the business of being an academic,” argued Harwin. “It is extremely common for academics to do these kind of opportunities, and it is the common understanding of finance professors who are on the enture track that these opportunities are available when they become full professors. And so that’s been part of her essentially sort of understanding of her field and career trajectory for an extended period. Professor Ravina’s calculations account for levels of risk and uncertainty associated with these possibilities.”

‘THERE ARE LOWER RANKED SCHOOLS THAT PAY MORE THAN TOP RANKED SCHOOLS’

Harwin noted that she looked at the CVs of 135 professors at schools ranked 30th to 40th and also averaged the salaries of both an associate professor and a full tenured professor at Temple University, Penn State University, Michigan State, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana to come up with some of her estimates.

Shot back Bekaert’s attorney: “I don’t think she can testify that she thinks she would be paid less. That’s pure speculation. There are lower ranked schools that pay more than top ranked schools because of where they are or how much money they have. That’s common. In other words, she can’t testify she’ll make less because that’s a guess.”

“It’s not a guess,” retorted Harwin. “It’s not a guess at all. It’s clear that she as an academic has a broad understanding about what it looks like to be at a top school versus lower tiered schools. And it’s clear  she can testify about her job prospects with respect to academic positions and then what follows is the translation essentially.”

Ultimately, the jury decided that the damages would be far less than what Ravina and her attorneys had wanted. $1.25 million in all.

DON’T MISS: CBS DEAN CALLS FACULTY DISPUTE ‘A SOAP OPERA’ or COLUMBIA INVESTIGATED FOUR SEPARATE CASES OF HARASSMENT AT ITS BUSINESS SCHOOL IN A SINGLE YEAR

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