Ways to Help Pay for Your MBA

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Bloomberg BusinessWeek has provided useful tips on how to finance business school.

You can access the full article, but here are a few nuggets we gleaned for the article, supplemented with some of our own observations from the application and scholarship process. Some, if not all of these tips, could prove beneficial as you tackle the increasing cost of earning an MBA.

• Search for scholarships that you specifically qualify for. These could include gender, ethnicity, undergraduate program or desired career path. The article notes that Stanford has a fellowship program designed for Indian nationals.
• Ask other students and alumni how they paid for their degree. I hope MBA Connections will eventually be able to help with this. I secured half the funding for my MBA from Wake Forest by building and running a social media network for the marketing department.
• Give it your all during the application process. Schools often make funding choices based on exceptional essays and phenomenal GMAT scores. Undergraduate record and work experience also matter.
• Apply early. I found out that Wake Forest had a predetermined about of scholarship money set aside. The longer you wait to apply, and get accepted, the less money schools have available to award. I have never heard of a scholarship specifically geared to procrastinators!
• You can also offset the costs of preparing for business school. There is even a scholarship program built around the GMAT.

I certainly hope these tips help. I would encourage you to also make connections on our Facebook group and find out what other people have done to secure funding. Good luck!

Internships Playing Greater Role in Career Development

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Perhaps overlooked in the Wall Street Journal's streaming coverage was a article by Melissa Korn looking at how summer internships are playing an increased role in career development.

She notes that it has become common to see at least a third of MBA students turn an internship into a post-graduate career. The numbers are rising after a decline during the last recession. Korn notes that this trend "raises the stakes" for students, who are realizing that their internship selection could have significant implications on their career path.

A few interesting facts: more than 40% of students in the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business accepted full-time jobs from their internship employers. That stat, taken from last year's graduating class, compares to 25% two years earlier.

Nearly a third of graduates from Columbia Business School's 2012 class went to work for the company where they interned. Less a fifth of students in the 2010 class followed that route.

This is a great read. It can be found here.

N.C. Career Fair Set for Raleigh

MyWorkster's Recruit NC is hosting a multi-school alumni only career fair that promises to have more than 80 employers in attendance.

The event is scheduled for Thursday, June 6, from 11 am - 3 pm at the McKimmon Conference Center (1101 Gorman Street, Raleigh, N.C.).

The fair, which is being offered in conjunction with N.C. State University, is open to virtually anyone who has graduated from a North Carolina university. Standard tickets are free. VIP passes, which include exclusive and early access employers, cost $11.54.

Click here to register, find more information and a list of employers expected to attend.

How to Tackle the Dreaded MBA Application Essay

U.S. News & World Report recently posted a brief article looking at the best ways to tackle the dreaded essay question(s) included with most business school applications.

The full article can be found here, but we are going to list a few of the highlights.

• Avoid writing an "accomplishment" essay. Aim for a highly personal and self-revealing response. 
• Providing a genuine "back story" adds a nice touch.
• Try to avoid focusing on your weaknesses and flaws. If you do feel compelled to mention a weakness, put more time and effort explaining what you have done to overcome that flaw.
• Be honest, particularly when discussing areas of self improvement.

Business Schools, Wall Street Using Training Boot Camps

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A new trend is developing for business school students - specialized boot camps that teach financial analysis and Excel modeling.

Graduates, for fees that can top $1,000 a day, can take courses to bone up on skills that may have been lacking in their MBA programs, the New York Times reports. Offered by companies such as Training the Street and Wall Street Prop, the boot camps are helping prepare people for high-pressure jobs at firms like Blackstone Group and Goldman Sachs.

All but one of the nation's top 20 business schools use Training the Street, the report says.

Read the entire article here.

CEO Viewpoint: Apple's Tim Cook

A few weeks ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook went back to Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, where he is an alumnus, and had an interview with William Boulding, the school's dean. Videos of that session are now available, so we snagged them and wanted to share them. We included six of the videos below:

On the topic of collaboration:

Discussing ethical leadership:

Cook's view on inspirational leaders:

A discussion on intuition:

Career planning:

Cook discusses his three focuses (people, strategy and execution):

Precise Offers Matter in Negotiations

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The next time you are interviewing for a job of asking for a raise, think about giving the other party an atypical number.

A recent study from Columbia Business School has determined that people who provide precise dollar amounts in negotiations fare better than those who default to rounded-off numbers.

For instance, the study determined that people who offer $5,015, as opposed to $5,000, appear more informed about the true value of the item being negotiated over.

"What we discovered is there is a big difference in what most people think is a good strategy when negotiating and what research shows is a good strategy," Malia Mason says. "Negotiators should remember that in this case. Zeros really do add nothing to the bargaining table."

Mason and Daniel Ames are set to publish their findings in the next Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The duo researched 1,254 fictitious negotiators (clever that they settled on a precise number).

Negotiators were placed in a number of scenarios for items such as jewelry and used cars. The item I read doesn't specifically address salaries, but it would makes sense that a job candidate or an established employee would seem more knowledgeable about their intrinsic value if they had a specific number in mind, rather than a rounded-off amount.