Reflections from India

Education and educators are highly regarded in India, which makes teaching a pleasure and a privilege

by Marshall Goldsmith

During a recent trip to India, I had the opportunity to work with many dedicated professionals at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad.

ISB is an amazing place. It is a new institution that was formed with the support of Kellogg, Wharton, and the London Business School. The admission standards are extremely selective. Although it is only a few years old, ISB is already one of the top five schools in the world in terms of average GMAT score. I was there to teach a two-day executive education class on coaching to 50 top leaders from across India.

I love teaching in India. Every participant in my program was eager to learn. There is nothing that a teacher loves more than dedicated students who want to learn. The first day of my program lasted from 7 in the morning until 10 at night. I tried to answer as many questions as I could, but eventually I ran out of time! My students were willing to listen as long as I was willing to teach.

Deep Respect for Education

I was amazed at the sincerity and interest shown by the participants in my course. There was absolutely none of the cynicism or skepticism that I sometimes encounter in the U.S. or Western Europe. As a rule, people in India have a deep respect for education and for educators. At the end of the two days, I was given a lovely card with a personal thank-you note from each participant. I was very moved by their gratitude.

As I headed to my room at around 10:30 p.m., I saw three young ISB MBA students working on an assignment and decided to stop by and introduce myself. I asked them several questions about their lives, their futures, India, and the new global economy.

When I asked, "How many hours a day do you work?" one young woman laughed and said, "28!"

Income Gap Widens

All three agreed that they started studying each day early in the morning and finished late at night. They didn't seem to mind. They realized how fortunate they were to be admitted to such a selective program. They were grateful for the opportunity to be there and wanted to learn as much as they could.

As a country, India still has hundreds of millions of extremely poor citizens who live in villages. The differentiation in incomes between the rich and poor has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

I asked the MBA students, "How do the poor people in the villages feel about fortunate students like you? You are going to be making a lot of money when you graduate from ISB. Is there increasing resentment out there in the countryside?"

Emigration Not as Attractive

Their answer surprised me. The students all knew people in the villages. The general feeling was that, in almost every village, there was a resident who had left, attained a good education, and achieved a much more affluent life. If there was not a person in the village who had made it out, there was a relative in a nearby village. The students felt that even poor villagers saw hope for their children or grandchildren through hard work and education.

The world has changed a lot in the past few years. In the past, brilliant students, like the ones that I met at ISB, all dreamed of going to America or Europe for a quality education. Now they can get a quality education in India. In the past, brilliant young students all planned on leaving India to get great jobs. Now they can get great jobs in India.

The students went on to discuss India's problems. Corruption, lack of infrastructure, and emerging competition in Asia all represent real challenges for India.

U.S. Heading Backward?

As I listened to these brilliant young students, I thought about America. In the past few decades, we have made progress on many fronts and may have gone backward on others.

In some ways there seems to be a decreasing respect for education—and for educators—in our country. The average high school teacher used to make a little less money than an accountant or consultant, but not that much. Today the difference in income is huge.

In general, teachers don't seem to get the same amount of respect that they did when I was a student. And, unlike the people whom I met in India, many Americans are not very confident that their children and grandchildren will have better lives (BusinessWeek.com, 8/21/07) than they have.

The Future Is in Knowledge

As parents, teachers, leaders, and citizens, we can learn a couple of lessons from the people whom I met in India. Individually and collectively, we may need to revisit our priorities. We may need to demonstrate more respect for education and for educators. In the competitive world of knowledge work, educated individuals and educated societies are going to have a huge competitive advantage. We may also need to connect the value of a great education with our hope for a brighter future.

Many years ago, most Americans were farmers. Those days are gone. More recently, many Americans worked in manufacturing. Those days are soon to be gone. The future of America is going to be determined by knowledge workers. Education will be a key factor in determining our collective success as a society and each person's success as an individual.

Hard-working, educated people who have hopes and dreams for a better future are going to win, no matter what country they come from.

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Scandal in Mind, Fuqua Welcomes MBAs

New-student orientation puts renewed emphasis on the honor code and ethics in the wake of cheating expulsions at the Duke B-school

by Alison Damast

With a new MBA class arriving, administrators at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business are trying to move beyond last spring's cheating scandal, while simultaneously addressing cultural differences that may have led to the incident, which resulted in mass suspensions and expulsions (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/30/07, "Duke MBAs Fail Ethics Test"

Preventing such a situation from happening again is a top priority for the school, which greeted a new class of 431 first-year students in early August. Among the orientation activities was a session on the school's honor code, during which they talked about how international students might view ethical issues through different lenses.

The cheating scandal, which resulted in the one-year suspension of 15 students and the expulsion of nine students, was on many students' minds as they arrived on campus for orientation. Over the summer, school officials had been working hard to contain the fallout from the nationwide publicity over the scandal and calming fears of incoming students that a Duke MBA had become tainted. "When they first brought up the honor code, it was like, 'Oh gosh, what is going to happen now,'" said Kaamil Isles, a first-year Fuqua student. "You worry that the actions of a few students or subset of students will affect how teachers perceive us and potentially, the people who hire us."

Sending a Strong Message

Administrators hope to assuage students' fears that the school has lost trust in them by reassuring them that the school does not plan to change its educational practices. However, the school is taking new steps this year to ensure that all students, no matter what culture they come from, understand how to interpret and abide by the school's much-vaunted honor code. "We wanted to send a strong message to the students that we were not willing to change our teaching methods in response to the honor-code violations," said Bill Boulding, senior associate dean for daytime programs.

Over the summer, administrators conducted an exhaustive review of how the school presents the code to students during orientation and over the course of their two years at the school, from the admissions process to investigations of alleged violations. They asked professors to make sure that students are clear about how to conduct themselves during assignments and exams. There will be renewed emphasis on the code in academic settings this year. It will be discussed in more depth in a new three-week program at the school called the Global Institute and will be woven into the school's new curriculum, debuting this year.

Orientation for first-year students was a starting point for discussion on the topic. At the event, administrators and students guided a discussion of the honor code within the context of last year's cheating scandal. Boulding, who spoke at the event, emphasized that students need to buy into the school's honor-code culture, no matter what country they come from or education system they were raised in. "I wanted to drive home the point that we are all one culture here at Fuqua and we all have to accept the same standards, even though you might have been brought up in an education system where the accepted practices varied considerably," said Boulding.

Questions About Cultural Distortions

Indeed, the cultural issues at play in the case are ones that have taken on renewed importance in recent months. Nearly all of the 38 students found guilty of cheating by the school were Asian, according to papers filed by Robert Ekstrand, a Durham (N.C.) attorney who last spring filed appeals on behalf of 16 students. Those appeals were all denied by the school. Duke officials would not release details on the case, except to say that the students involved were from "multiple countries and multiple continents."

"It is a cultural issue, a very serious one. It is subtle and is capable of repetition without notice," Ekstrand said in an interview earlier this month. He declined to discuss details of the cases because, he said, the issue remained open.

Meanwhile, in a brief submitted to the school during the appeals process, provided to BusinessWeek by one of the disciplined students, Ekstrand asserted that the students may not have been given a fair trial by the school because of the manner in which the investigation was conducted, one that did not take into account the legal cultures the students came from.

Tripped Up by the U.S. Legal System?

According to the document, in the students' home countries, confessions are looked upon as a way to bring a person back into the larger group. The accused is expected to show remorse and his desire to be reintegrated. It's a philosophy that is "fundamentally different than that of the American legal culture," Ekstrand wrote. "When they were confronted with allegations of wrongdoing, they were predisposed to avoid even the appearance of a disagreement with the school's allegation. To these students, it would be illogical for them to admit violating the code, and then dispute the extent of the wrongdoing."

This worked against them during the initial judicial board hearings, Ekstrand wrote. Many of these students offered long and rambling confessions that expressed their remorse and repentance for their actions. Judicial board members may have misinterpreted the students' remorse, viewing their confessions through the lens of the American legal culture, Ekstrand argued.

Indeed, two of the students found guilty by the school, both of whom are Asian, spoke with BusinessWeek in Durham earlier this summer and agreed that cultural differences played a role in how they chose to answer the school's charges and defend themselves.

"Totally Changed Our Career"

One of the students received a one-year suspension, while the other was expelled. Both filed appeals that were turned down. They said they were unclear what evidence the school had against them when they were asked to issue a confession by the investigator assigned to the case. They also said they did not understand what it meant to have "the right to avoid self-incrimination," an option guaranteed to students in Fuqua's honor code.

The two students, who had established an e-mail address with the name "Fuqua Facts," asked that their names not be disclosed because they are hoping to return to Duke. They remained on the Duke campus after most of the other accused students had left, hoping to reverse the school's action, "I spent a lot of time during the hearing to say how I felt regretful and sorry about the charges. I didn't defend myself point by point," said one student from China, who received the suspension. "Now, I think this was a significant mistake."

The other student, a former financial-services worker from Beijing, who was expelled, added: "Even if we made a mistake, we just wanted to talk to the school. This has totally changed our career and lives."

But while the students and Ekstrand hold out hope that the incident will be reviewed, Duke business-school officials say they have no plans to reopen the issue. "For us, it is the end of the appeal process," Boulding said.

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American M.B.As. Flock to Asia

By Cris Prystay

When William Lee, a manager at Microsoft Corp., decided to seek to leapfrog his career by getting an M.B.A., he signed up for a joint-venture executive program in Singapore run by the Anderson School of Business of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National University of Singapore. Mr. Lee, 37 years old, lives in Reno, Nevada, and his job is entirely based in the U.S. By the time he graduates in August, he will have flown to Asia four times over 15 months to earn a degree he easily could have done at home.

The commute is worth it, he said. This way he can ramp up his Asia experience to help fast-forward his career.

"That's where the economic growth is. If you want to be a business leader in the next 10 to 15 years, understanding the Asian business environment is important," Mr. Lee said. "When I was weighing which school to go to, credibility came to mind. The perception that I have a better understanding of the environment is easier to sell when I can say I've gone over there to study and observe the business environment and meet Asian business leaders."

U.S. and European business schools that have expanded to Asia in the past few years to tap growing demand for management education there are starting to see new demand from an unexpected clientele: students from back home.

A number of high-profile business schools, including the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and French business school Insead, have set up campuses or joint-venture executive M.B.A. programs with local universities in Asia to tap demand from both local students and global expatriates working in the region. As Asia's booming economies, led by India and China, gain more global muscle, business students world-wide have become eager to get Asia on their résumés. These schools have seen a pickup in enrollment from students who commute from places as far away as London and Los Angeles.

"These students want the Asia exposure, even if they aren't working there now. They view the trend in business as requiring a significant understanding of Asia," said Judy Olian, dean of the Anderson School of Business. In the class that just began in May in UCLA's program based in Singapore, 48% of the students are U.S. residents, up from 29% in May 2004.

The growing number of Asia-bound M.B.A. commuters, meanwhile, lends fresh credence to business schools' decision to head to Asia themselves. For nearly a decade, U.S. and European business schools have wrestled with how best to address Asia's boom. While some have plowed ahead in Asia, others have held back, concerned that offering a satellite degree would hurt the brand power of the degree offered at their U.S. campus.

"As important as Asia and other international markets are in the global economy, we don't believe we could expand the faculty to fulfill the needs of a full-fledged 'branch campus' abroad without diluting the nature of the kind of education we offer," said Krishna Pelapu, senior associate dean for international development at Harvard Business School. Harvard has more than 200 full-time professors who are occupied at home with full course loads; it would be difficult to get faculty of the same stature and quality to teach abroad, he said.

Other business schools believe they can strengthen their brand by offering a degree overseas. Kellogg, for example, has run an executive M.B.A. in Hong Kong through a partnership with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology's School of Business and Management for 10 years, and it also offers joint-venture M.B.A.s in Israel, Canada and Germany.

Kellogg's brand is based in part on the quality of the student the school admits and the quality of instruction, said Dipak Jain, Kellogg's dean. Students admitted in places like Hong Kong must have the same qualifications as the students who take the program at the school's campus near Chicago, he said.

For staffing reasons, Kellogg offers only its part-time executive M.B.A. overseas. Its professors fly to Hong Kong on weekends and teach half the courses, and business-school professors from HKUST teach the other half. "We only partner with schools we know have quality people who can deliver the quality experience," Mr. Jain said.

"We think the quality of our program and our brand has gone up, overall, because we have programs in Europe, in Asia and a new one in Miami," he said. "In the Hong Kong program, for example, we have electives on doing business in China; students in our German program or in Chicago or Tel Aviv can go to Hong Kong and take these electives. Or they can fly to Hong Kong and take the whole M.B.A. program."

Dutch citizen Michael Hamelink, 39, commuted from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Singapore to do his executive M.B.A. at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business program five years ago. "At that time, I had just moved from Hong Kong back to Johannesburg, and I was impressed by the huge impact Asia had on the world economy and especially China on the business world. This made me choose to commute to Singapore to sense and gather most of Asia's business insights," said Mr. Hamelink, who now is chief financial officer of KLM City Hopper, KLM's regional airline for Europe. He said he would like to return to Asia to work in the next few years, and that the contacts he made in the program would prove helpful.

Kellogg and Chicago charge the same prices for the executive M.B.A. programs they run in the U.S. as those they run elsewhere. UCLA and National University of Singapore charge slightly less for the Singapore-based degree compared with UCLA's own Los Angeles-based executive M.B.A.: Fees for the degree in Los Angeles cost $100,000, and fees for the Asia-based program are $69,800.

But there also is the cost for travel. The Singapore-based program, set up in 2004, is broken into six intensive two-week blocks that are split between countries: two sessions in Singapore, one in China, one in India and two in Los Angeles. Students pay for their own flights and hotels for the 12 weeks the course is in session.

Assuming a student pays $250 a night for a hotel, he would save about $15,000 on the Asia-based program. Students get two degrees, one from UCLA and one from the National University of Singapore.

"We have quite a few Americans based in the U.S., but who have Asia responsibilities and/or interests, such as supply chains out of Asia, or working for an Asian company, or marketing to Asia," said Jochen Wirtz, a business-school professor who is co-director of the UCLA-NUS program. The program's structure of two-week sessions "allows participants to fly in from anywhere. We are probably the only program in the world where some 50% travel from another continent -- not just country -- to attend our sessions."

Mr. Lee, the Microsoft manager, said cost savings weren't a factor in his decision to go the Asian route. He had first considered doing a full-time M.B.A. at an Ivy League school, but the Singapore-based program struck a chord.

He has loved the pan-Asian exposure, including meetings with senior business executives that the school set up. Students also work on a real piece of consulting business as part of a final project. Mr. Lee prepared an Asian market-entry strategy for a hedge fund based in the U.S.

"I had never been to Asia before the program, but I know you have to understand Asia if you want to take on a senior business role," he said. "That's where the growth will be. The U.S. economy simply isn't growing like the Asian economies."

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MBA Applications Surge

Demand for admission to U.S. graduate business schools has risen, and the growing number of applicants is entering what some say is the most competitive pool in recent years.

The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) reported Aug. 15 that applications to business schools are being buoyed by a confident outlook on the economy and increasing demand from employers for management degrees. In turn, schools are choosing from a pool of applicants who are equally or better qualified academically than last year's class. The majority of the group's member schools are in the U.S.

Admissions officers have had a strong group of applicants to choose from this year. Nearly three in five full-time master's and MBA programs reported that their applicants are of better quality than those seen last year, according to the GMAC survey.

Better Applicants, More Programs

That doesn't surprise California admissions consultant Stacy Blackman, who helps students navigate the admissions process and work on their applications. "I think the quality of the applications that are submitted is going up," said Blackman. "People are understanding the process better and what it takes to submit a strong application."

The boom in applications mirrors an increase in registration volume for the GMAT—the B-school entrance exam—which this year jumped by 6.2% within the U.S. and 21% outside the U.S. And nearly two-thirds (64%) of full-time MBA programs reported an increase in application volume compared to 2006. Rosemaria Martinelli, director of admissions at University of Chicago's business school, said applications overall have been up "substantially" for the past two years. "It's very competitive out there. We've seen double-digit increases for all applications two years in a row," she said.

One of the key movers in the growing number of applicants is demographics, says Rachel Edgington, director of market research and analysis for GMAC. A cohort of students dubbed "millenials"—those from the generation born in or after 1982—fueled much of the growth in domestic applications this year, Edgington said. "This younger generation is a much larger pool then the past generation and they are starting to enter into the application pool," Edgington said. "Just in sheer size, they are much larger."

Degrees in Specialized Fields

Schools are responding to demand from students by creating an array of new flexible MBA programs, ranging from part-time programs to master's degrees in specialized business fields. In just the first half of 2007, 641 new graduate management programs were introduced, according to the GMAC report. That's a sharp leap from a decade ago, when only 74 new programs were created.

The GMAC survey collected data from 445 programs at 252 business schools, 70% of them in the U.S. This is the first year that the survey received data from PhD programs and master's degrees in specialized business fields, such as master's of science in management or finance.

Fifty-six percent of full-time MBA programs said application volume from domestic candidates was up this year, a significant reversal from recent years where growth was flat. At NYU's Stern School of Business, applications from domestic students outpaced those of international students this year, said Isser Gallogly, executive director of MBA admissions. "We saw a tipping of the scales because domestic was a little higher than international growth this year," he said.

That's not to say interest from international applicants is subsiding. Applications from students abroad, particularly those in India and China, remain strong.

Growth in Part-Time Programs

India is fueling most of the growth in international applications seen by full-time programs in the U.S., with 64% of B-schools reporting India as the country from which they received the greatest number of applications. "With India, the numbers were already high and for some schools, the numbers can't get much higher," Edgington said.

Another area showing considerable growth is part-time MBA programs, where applications increased "noticeably" over the past year, Edgington said. More than two in three part-time MBA programs reported that application volume increased over 2006 and the trend is expected to continue over the next few years, she said. Women and minorities are driving the increase in application volume, drawn by the more flexible schedule and time frame offered by such programs. Not surprisingly there is a larger proportion of women in part-time programs (37%) than among full-time programs (27%).

PhD Applications Decline

While the appeal of an MBA remains strong, the lure of a PhD in management education appears to be on the decline. PhD programs were the only program surveyed in the report that did not report strong application volume from applicants this year. Most PhD applicants—two out of three—are foreign citizens, many of whom are now opting to apply to MBA programs instead, Edgington said.

"What we see now is that the international prospective students see the MBA as more valuable than PhD in terms of global currency, name recognition, and employer respect," Edgington said.

The PhD decline confirms fears in the B-school world that there will be a shortage of qualified professors in coming years. With application volume expected to increase over the next three years, B-schools may find themselves overwhelmed with students and lacking professors. It's a problem the next generation of B-schoolers may want to tackle.

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India beats Harvard

The number of Asian examinees of the GMAT has increased significantly. This is the finding of the Asian trend report, which had recently been published by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). The report outlines, that Indian citizens are representing the - by far – biggest group of participants and tend to prefer Indian business schools.

n the year 2000, a total of 35,441 GMAT examinees had taken the test, in 2006, there were already 50,367 participants. India is the country, where most of the examinees come from. As in the year 2000, only 6,128 Indian citizens were taking the worldwide common Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), in 2006, there were 16,541 examinees.

With 10,142 participants, Chinese citizens represent the second biggest group. However, the increase is considerably less (8,756 examinees in the year 2000). South Korea (6,977) and Taiwan (5,401) made it to a third and fourth place with also notable gainings. Against this, the number of test-taking examinees declines in Japan, Singapore and Indonesia.

However, the figures don´t give a complete picture because the six Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Calcutta, Indore, Lucknow, and Kozhikode don´t ask for GMAT and use their own Common Admission Test (CAT). In January, 200,000 examinees had taken the test and by this, applied for one of the 1,300 places to study at the leading Indian business schools.

S still ahead
Among the ten most popular countries, Asian citizens are sending their score reports to - in order to study there, the United States are still on top with 76 percent (80 percent in 2002). Followed by Great Britain with five percent and India with four percent. As the only European country, France, with two percent, is ranking on sixth place of the top ten countries. Compared with 2002, especially India could move up in the rankings by four places.

Among all business schools, Asian GMAT participants apply for, Harvard Business School is on first place. The Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad debuted in second place, still ahead of Wharton School. With its ninth place, Insead is the best European school, still ahead of the London Business School, which holds rank nine.

The high positioning of the ISB among Asian citizens is astonishing. Especially because the business school, which was established with the support of Wharton and Kellogg, does not supply of an international accredition, yet. Moreover – like the IIMS – it does not award any MBA degree but a diploma for its Post Graduate Programs in Management (PGP).

Indian citizens tend to prefer a school in India
The ranking list of those countries Indian citizens prefer to study at, shows how strongly Indian residents have shifted their focus on their own country. Still, the United States are on top with 71 percent, leaving the others far behind, though, with a considerable decline. In 2002, still 85 percent intended to study there.

Yet, India (with nine percent) has displaced Great Britain from its second to a third place. Herein, France held its sixth place with three percent as well. Switzerland (0,7 percent) made it to place nine, ahead of Spain with 0,4 percent. In 2002, Germany still ranked on tenth place with 0,3 percent. Now, it seems to have apparently lost its attractiveness for Indian citizens as a location to study at.

The score is even more astonishing among the most popular schools for Indians. Meanwhile, the Indian School of Management has even displaced Harvard from its first place. As the best European business schools, Insead and LBS made it to place five and six.

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New York Suspects Student-Loan Kickbacks

By CHAD BRAY

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said an investigation by his office has revealed widespread, questionable financial arrangements among student-loan providers and a number of colleges and universities, including kickbacks to some schools.

Mr. Cuomo said his inquiry has uncovered practices by lenders that, at a minimum, create questionable conflicts of interest with schools and could be illegal under the state's consumer-protection law.

The practices include paying kickbacks to schools based on a percentage of loans directed to a lender, paying for trips to resorts for financial-aid officers, and setting up funds or lines of credit for schools in exchange for being placed on preferred-lender lists.

Such practices can drive up the cost of loans to students and limit their choices of lenders, Mr. Cuomo said.

"Preferred student loans often mean preferred for the school at the expense of the student," he said.

The attorney general said his office is "actively investigating" the student-loan practices at 100 public and private colleges and universities inside and outside of New York and has sent letters to more than 400 schools, urging them to end questionable relationships with lenders.

Mr. Cuomo didn't name any of the schools involved, but they include Ivy League institutions, his office said. Mr. Cuomo said his investigation is continuing, but his office hasn't reached the point of pursuing enforcement actions against the lenders or any schools.

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Reviews: Admission Consultants/essay editing services in India

Hi People, I have joined many threads to find out this information and found people are as confused as I was. I researched quite a few consultants and below are my findings:

Based in Delhi

1. Genesis, Delhi – Their response was quite assuring to me. They provide assurance of getting you placed in good schools, charging 100,000 – 200,000. They also claim to assure huge scholarships. I think that the claims are just too tall. I got feedback from other informal sources that they only make these claims after scrutinizing the profile of applicant. If the profile already appears promising, then they provide admission and school guarantee. My opinion is it’s not quite honest approach if what I heard is true. It’s like a doctor treating a healthy person and providing a wellness guarantee.
2. Princeton Review, Delhi - They seem to be the most feasible in terms of charges. They charge 32,000 for 5 applications. However when I interacted with the guys, I did not find them convincing enough to do justice to my profile. Also, when I told them that I may apply to 7-8 schools then they were far more interested in money than any other talk. I am not going to enroll with them.
3. Jamboree, Delhi - Gosh! Sky high rates. 30-35K for 3 applications! They do not have full time essay editors. I could not speak with anyone who would be able to answer any B-school specific queries. Personally think that to answer questions like “Why MBA” and “Why this school” you actually need someone who has been through the process and knows about your profile and what schools are looking for. Jamboree is regarded good for GMAT prep though – I will rule out for any essay editing.

Online

1. EssayEdge.Com - Probably the best known online consultants for editing business school essays. Editors are mostly Americans and have their distinct style of writing which might not be suitable for an Indian applicant like me. As per my understanding, in the admissions committee, mostly current students evaluate the applications from their region in the first place. If any Indian would evaluate my application, he would easily figure out that essays have been written or edited by an American. . Essayedge is also very expensive for me.
2. ApexWriters.Com – These are current students and alumni. I interacted with a current student and one admission consultant. When I insisted on speaking with one of the editors, they also put me through a Sloan student. I also interacted with some past applicants, received positive feedback. Apex also offered to edit one paragraph of my essay for free and I was impressed with the critique. I am going with them.
3. Essaylabb.com – When I called these guys, I could not get convincing answers for my queries again. I could not get justification of their charges. Also, they are not the guys who have gone through it …

I have enrolled with apexwriters for one school and after evaluating the services would take a decision on other schools.

Please add your experiences too.

Pls note: These are my personal views and findings, I request all the applicants to do their own due diligence.

Cheers!
gamemba blogspot

Forbes' 2007 MBA rakning out

1. Dartmouth (Tuck)
2. Stanford
3. Harvard
4. Virginia (Darden)
5. Pennsylvania (Wharton)
6. Columbia
7. Chicago
8. Yale
9. Northwestern (Kellogg)
10. Cornell (Johnson)
11. NYU (Stern)
12. Duke (Fuqua)
13. UC Berkeley (Haas)
14. Texas-Austin (McCombs)
15. UNC (Kenan-Flagler)
16. Iowa (Tippie)
17. MIT (Sloan)
18. Brigham Young (Marriott)
19. Michigan State (Broad)
20. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)

For Complete list visit Forbes

Who Gets Temp Work Visas?

Temporary visas to work in the U.S., known as H-1Bs, have become highly controversial. Two U.S. senators are investigating how foreign companies are using the visas to bring workers into the country. They suspect that Indian outsourcing firms are using H-1Bs to facilitate the outsourcing of American jobs. Here is a look at the top 200 companies that receive the visas, led by India's Infosys and Wipro.

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Financing an MBA in the U.S.

International students coming to the U.S. have resources—online and off—to help them find financial aid for business school:

by Erica Pelzek

Perhaps you attended university in Australia, New Zealand, or Britain and seek a different career and educational experience among Yanks? Or maybe your education in India or China piqued your interest in obtaining an MBA in the U.S.?

Regardless of your motives as a globe-trotting, full-time business student, you have to get here somehow, and that journey can be expensive—anywhere from $20,000 to $47,000 a year for tuition alone. But worry not, traveling student. A few key financial aid Web sites and resources are like markers on a treasure map for those who wish to head to the U.S. for B-school.

Financial aid is often complicated, and for international students in the U.S., it can be even more trying. Besides a lack of federally designated aid, many international loans for students studying in the U.S. require permanent resident or U.S. citizen co-signers. Adding yet another hurdle is the limited availability of scholarships specifically for international students studying in the U.S. Often, international students are added to the same pool as all other entering students, making scholarships incredibly competitive and difficult to obtain.

Online Resources

The No. 1 stop for international students for financial-aid resources is the Web, including the International Education Financial Aid's Web site, which provides grant listings and a database brimming with domestic and international scholarship opportunities.

More important, the Web site links to International Student Loan, a site devoted to giving students who wish to study internationally information on loan providers. These loan monies don't flow freely without a few obstacles, though. The international loan highlighted on the site requires a creditworthy co-signer who must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident. Additionally, the student must attend a qualifying school from the Web site's list.

As of August, 2007, most of BusinessWeek's top-ranked full-time MBA programs for 2006 were qualifying schools for this loan. However, even if a school is not on the list, it may have its own loan program for international students. For instance, Diane Hunt, assistant director of financial aid for the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, says the B-school has a loan arrangement for international students through Citibank (C). CitiAssist Loan recipients can borrow up to the full cost of attendance, regardless of their credit scores and less the amount of financial aid (scholarships, etc.) received.

Similar to the International Education Financial Aid site is the Institute of International Education's Funding for U.S. Study Online. The site provides a large, free, searchable database of grants, scholarships, and other awards for international students studying in the U.S.

EduPASS, a site for prospective international students, is chock-full of advice and information on loan providers, including the Global Student Loan Corp., which offers international students loans without need of a co-signer in the U.S. Students may need co-signers from their home countries, however. For those not familiar with financial-aid and academic jargon, eduPASS has a comprehensive glossary to help decipher the vocabulary, defining words from "American" to "J-1 Visa."

For a more proactive advising experience, the U.S. State Dept.'s Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs has a "global network" called EducationUSA, developed to provide information and guidance to students seeking to study in the U.S. Its detailed Web site provides more than enough advice, even mapping out the step-by-step actions international students should take to apply for aid, from speaking with advisers in their home countries to seeking work-study employment in the U.S.

Offline Resources

Although databases provide a wealth of information for prospective international B-school students, certain language barriers and a lack of interpersonal communication can make merely searching the Web for financial aid time-consuming and confusing.

If a school's scholarship terms or financial-aid requirements are unclear, call the financial-aid office directly to inquire. Advisers at Michigan, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business all note that universities often reward qualified international students the same way they reward high-achieving domestic students—with scholarships.

For instance, at Chicago, international students can qualify for target-based awards aimed at students from developing or emerging economies, says Director of Admissions Rosemaria Martinelli. Opportunities and awards like this are worth checking into, even if they are extremely competitive; often, scholarship applicants who do not receive one scholarship will be entered into the pool for a different one.

EducationUSA also lists educational advising centers in most countries around the world, where international students can go for guidance about the application process and financing higher education in the U.S. The program even offers education fairs in different countries, to provide curious students with more information on studying in the U.S. Recent fairs were held in Toronto, China, Japan, South Korea, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Africa, to name a few.

Whatever your research method for the hunt for financial aid, persistence is key. Keep searching for the best loan and scholarship programs to suit your needs, and use proactivity and organization to lead you to your final destination: a top B-school that provides an ample amount of financial support.

Pelzek is a BusinessWeek.com intern.

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MBAs See Lowest Pay Within Accounting Sector

MBA candidates ranked accounting as the lowest-paying among 47 industries included in Fortune Magazine’s 2007 survey of attitudes toward various employers and professional roles. The average expected starting salary for MBAs working in “auditing, accounting and taxation” (listed as a single category) came in at $63,694, according to the poll of 5,000 current MBA students. Five years after graduation, the MBA candidates expect accounting-related work to pay $111,135.

Both figures were the lowest by far among the 47 industries covered by the survey. The next-lowest paying sector, academic research, was far ahead at $77,859 for the year after graduation and $132,282 after five years. Government/public service and education/teaching ranked five and six notches higher, respectively, with expected first-year pay of about $83,500 and expected sixth-year pay at $144,000-148,000.

The annual survey is conducted for Fortune by Universum, a Philadelphia firm that specializes in employer branding.

Private equity - more specifically, "venture capital" – topped the MBA candidates’ pay expectations list, with first-year base salaries pegged at $107,919. Metals ranked second at $102,000, followed by management consulting ($101,400), investment management ($100,986) and investment banking ($98,877). However, the survey's emphasis on base pay rather than total compensation makes such comparisons cloudy.

Pay expectations showed a large gender difference. Female participants said they expected a base salary of $89,599 one year after graduation, rising to $169,849 after five years. Males expected $97,599 after one year and $204,372 after five years.

Management consulting remains the favorite initial destination for those pursuing MBA degrees. When participants were asked which companies they would most like to work for, blue-chip consulting firms McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting pulled down three of the top five places this year – just as they did in 2006. However, this year Google knocked McKinsey knocked out of its long-time first-place spot.

Goldman Sachs held its place as the favorite financial-sector employer in this year’s survey. Goldman placed third overall, behind Google and McKinsey.

The survey is constructed in a way that may limit its value as a gauge of candidate preferences. For one thing, private equity firms apparently weren't included among the 179 choices shown to MBA students taking part in the poll. Universum has said it compiles each year's list of possible choices by combining the prior year's top 100 with the top write-in vote-getters. Google was added in 2006 after drawing a huge write-in vote in 2005. But it looks like leading private-equity firms like Blackstone Group and Texas Pacific aren't garnering enough write-ins to earn themselves a place.

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Top Companies for MBAs to work

And the winners are...

Think of it as a popularity contest for companies. Each year, research firm Universum surveys MBA candidates on where they'd most like to work. See the exclusive Fortune.com list, including detailed profiles of the top 25.

1. Google	6. Apple
2. McKinsey & Company	7. Microsoft
3. Goldman Sachs	8. General Electric
4. Bain & Company	9. Nike
5. Boston Consulting Group	10. Bank of America

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H-1B limit reached for next year

The federal government has already received enough applications to reach the next fiscal year's cap for the H-1B worker visas so beloved by technology companies.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday that it determined on May 26--scarcely two months after this year's application window began on April 1--that the number of petitions streaming in will exceed the congressional limit of 65,000 visas. The people approved in that round of applications are eligible to start work on Oct. 1, 2006--which is when the federal government's 2007 fiscal year begins.

Another 5,830 petitions had arrived as of May 26 for the separate 20,000 visas reserved for the 2007 fiscal year for foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. institutions.

Regardless, employers seeking skilled foreign workers without such degrees cannot file petitions until the next application window opens on April 1, 2007.

Proponents of the H-1B program, which permits foreigners with at least a bachelor's degree in their area of specialty to be employed in the United States for up to six years, viewed the announcement as additional evidence that Congress urgently needs to raise the limit.

"This is bad news, as America keeps losing the race to other countries to attract the world's best and the brightest high-skilled workers," said Ralph Hellman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, whose member companies include Apple Computer, Dell, Cisco Systems, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. "This further underscores the need by Congress to provide additional incentives to attract these workers."

Those large technology companies have claimed for years that such changes are essential for filling key gaps created by a shortage of qualified Americans. Some, such as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, have gone so far as to suggest scrapping the restrictions altogether.

The industry edged closer to getting its way last week, when the U.S. Senate voted to raise the cap to 115,000 as part of a sweeping immigration bill. The measure also contains a provision stipulating that if that cap is reached in a certain year, then it can be raised by 20 percent for the next year. The government's baseline H-1B quota has remained at 65,000 since 2004 after peaking at 195,000 between 2001 and 2003.

That bill, however, is expected to face obstacles in the House of Representatives because of broader conflicts over the Senate's approach to immigration policy and border security.

Meanwhile, the H-1B system also has its fair share of critics. The U.S. division of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which represents high-tech professionals, has argued that the current system lets powerful corporations nab foreign workers at lower salaries than they would pay their American counterparts--or, in the most unsavory cases, to keep American workers out of jobs entirely.

"We don't understand why the Senate wants to expand a program that numerous government reports have found leaves U.S and foreign workers open to exploitation," IEEE-USA President Ralph Wyndrum Jr. said in a statement. "Fraud, abuse and misuse of the visas is rampant. The program should be fixed before it is expanded."

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