MBA students left high and dry

Spare a thought for the classes of 2007 and 2008. It seems investment banking jobs are proving hard to come by.

A student at a leading European business school says banks are still coming to present on campus, but that with the exception of Credit Suisse, few appear to have any full-time places left for 2008: “Places have already been filled by last year’s summer interns. If you missed the boat last summer, it’s a lot of work to find a place – especially if you don’t already have a finance background.”
A spokesperson for London Business School assures us it’s too early to establish what’s going on in terms of banks’ recruitment, but that banks are still coming on campus and conducting interviews.
Really? Other business schools are a little more explicit about the situation. Sandra Schwarzer, a finance careers manager at INSEAD, says they’ve had an “exceptional” year in terms of summer interns and that banks are on campus making offers, but admits that three have already filled corporate finance places – largely with interns.
And another London-based business school careers service manager says MBA students are definitely less popular among banks: “There are a lot more MBAs on the market, and banks appear to be more interested in MSc students with a really good specialty background.”
Malcolm Horton, head of European graduate recruiting and programme management at Lehman Brothers, says this year is no different from any other: “There are some business areas that don’t need to top up offers made to interns with additional full-time hires, and there are others that are still looking.”
Summer interns typically account for 65% to 90% of full-time associate hires, says Horton.
In many cases it looks like 90% may be closer to the mark.

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Student Funds Get Responsible

A new breed of student-run investment funds looks for social returns along with dividends
by Alison Damast

Student-run investment funds at business schools typically have had one goal: to teach students how to make money. Now a new generation of business-school students is giving that old-fashioned model a face-lift, aligning their investments with socially responsible business practices.
It's a movement that's quickly gaining steam. Students and faculty at Columbia Business School and the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business launched funds this fall directed solely toward socially responsible investing. The funds are an extension of a flurry of new electives, specialized research institutes, student clubs, and internships focused on social and environmental issues (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07).
This new breed of student-run funds has taken a variety of forms, from funds that invest in mainstream index funds to nonprofit arrangements aimed at helping "micro" entrepreneurs.
Students are clamoring to apply their new knowledge in this field to the financial markets, says Rich Leimsider, director of the Center for Business Education in New York, part of the nonprofit Aspen Institute. "It is definitely a new concept for business-school students to be doing this, " Leimsider says. "This is obviously a real-life example of putting your money where your mouth is."
Haas Fund Eschews Blanket Restrictions
Among the most high-profile of these funds is the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund, launched this fall with a seed gift of $250,000 from Haas alumnus Charlie Michaels. The school has since managed to raise a total of $1.3 million for the fund, which will be managed by four MBA students and two master's in financial engineering students.
The idea emerged from a discussion between Michaels and Haas professor Kellie McElhaney in which they both lamented the way most socially responsible investment funds are run. Typically, these funds screen out entire industries such as tobacco, alcohol, or firearms from their investment portfolios, a move that can have a significant impact on returns and could eliminate some companies that integrate socially responsible activities into their operations, said McElhaney, a professor of corporate responsibility and the director of the Center for Responsible Business.
Michaels and McElhaney decided to create a fund that would not impose those blanket restrictions on categories, but rather encourage students to make more significant investments in companies closely aligned with the philosophy of the fund. "We were trying to get away from the negative screening process of eliminating an entire industry," McElhaney says. "We wouldn't screen out a tobacco company, but we'd take a shorter position on tobacco than an energy company that more closely matches our criteria."
Putting Ideals into Practice
Most of the students running the fund were required to take a class in socially responsible investment techniques, offered by the school for the first time this semester. They spent the past few months developing their investment criteria and plan to evaluate firms on their social, environmental, and financial performance. By January, they expect to start investing in companies.
"For us, it is an opportunity to put our stake in the ground and prove that social investing can be a big part of a business-school curriculum," says Michael Pearce, a second-year Haas student who worked as an analyst for UBS (UBS) before attending business school. "It's one thing to read about it in class or learn about it in a club, but it's another thing to see if it actually works out in practice."
Columbia Takes a Micro View
At Columbia, students are hoping to make a dent in global poverty by creating a nonprofit investment fund dubbed the Microlumbia Fund. The students will make two to three low-interest "micro" loans a year to small, entry-level microfinance programs or banks in developing areas. These groups will then assist would-be small business owners in their communities.
The idea developed last year, when a group of first-year students took a class in social entrepreneurship. Since then, about 20 students have gotten involved with the group and have raised $10,000 for the venture. They hope to raise $100,000 and make two to three investments of approximately $25,000 each by the end of the year, says Katharine Leonberger, a second-year student and co-founder of the group. "It's not huge money," Leonberger says, "but even giving a loan of $25,000 to such a small institution can make a big difference."
The group will closely track its investments, sending a team of four to five students to third-world countries each year to work with microfinance institutions and entrepreneurs.
Raymond Fisman, the Lambert Family Professor of Social Enterprise and a faculty adviser to the group, applauds the approach. He hopes the lessons students learn from running Microlumbia will extend beyond their years as business-school students. "It's not like the primary function of a university should be to fund small-scale enterprise," Fisman says. "The primary goal should be to help our students understand how, when they go out into the world, they can do these things themselves."
A New Twist on Student Funds
Student-run investment funds have been around since at least 1952, when Gannon University in Erie, Pa., created what is believed to be the first one, says Edward Lawrence, a professor of finance at the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Business, who is compiling a directory of student-run investment funds. There are now about 200 in the world, approximately 190 of which are in North America.
Socially responsible investment funds at universities are a relatively new phenomenon, Lawrence says. Although the first one was launched at Bluffton University in Ohio in 1956, most have been launched in the past three to four years, he says. For example, NYU's Stern School of Business launched a social-entrepreneurship venture fund in 2004, and the Villanova School of Business launched a socially responsible investment fund the same year.
Other schools are following suit, though, given the resources required, only the largest schools are likely to create such funds. "Business students have become more socially oriented, and they realize that it is not just about making money," Lawrence says. "It's about having an impact in a positive way in the rest of the world."

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Now, Virginia University to train Indian managers

Virginia University in the US is set to enter the fast-paced education scene in India with certificate programmes for senior managers of Indian companies — for a steep fee of Rs 200,000 per candidate. “Whether it’s economy or education, India is a huge market. We are all getting attracted towards India’s fast expanding corporate sector, stable government, talented and young human capital and a vast English-speaking population,” said Darden School of Business dean Robert F Bruner. “We are going to start customised executive certificate programmes for Indian executives. The programmes will range from three to five days and the fee will be $5,000 (about Rs 200,000),” Bruner informed. The author of the book “The Panic of 1907” said the residential courses would be for senior managers of growing Indian companies. “I have interacted with seven top companies this time and they have shown real interest in our courses. We are also planning to give customised courses to individual companies,” said Bruner

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ISB to scale up ties with foreign varsities

Indian School of Business (ISB) is scaling up its partnerships with universities overseas. A slew of tie-ups are on the anvil — one with premier institutions in Brazil, Russia and China, another with Cornell University and a third with Columbia University. The proposed tie-up with institutions in Brazil, Russia and China is expected to generate new courses that will help executives tap business opportunities in these countries. The partnership with Cornell University is for joint research and curriculum development, while that with Columbia University is to develop a rating system for transnational corporates. “The goal of our tie-up with institutes in Brazil, Russia and China is to develop a programme for those who are entering BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China and India) countries to start their operations. It will also help train executives in an existing organization and generate more business opportunities,” ISB dean M Rammohan Rao told ET. According to him, the new programme will help executives understand the factors that triggered growth in the BRIC economies. ISB’s Wadhwani Centre of Entrepreneurial Development (WECD) and Cornell Centre (Cornell University) have agreed to work on a joint initiative, Sustainable Global Enterprise Initiative-India (SEGI). “It is aimed at developing a unique Indian model of corporate sustainability. The initiative will include establishing a Base of the Pyramid (BOP) Learning Laboratory-India. The initiative will also seek to build an executive council of serious and informed business leaders who can help to drive the agenda,” said Rao. Besides an executive council, faculty network and curriculum development, the programme will also involve applied research. It will offer a post PGP immersion programme for ISB graduates, develop an executive education programme and foster faculty and student exchanges across the two institutions. The B-school already has formed academic alliances with the Kellogg School of Mnagement at Northwestern University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the London Business School (LBS). Kellogg, Wharton and ISB signed a memorandum of understanding in November 1997 to share expertise and academic resources.

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Indian students dominate Harvard Business School

For the first time, Indian students will have a majority representation among the foreign students at the Harvard Business School (HBS). Out of the 900 students who joined this year and will graduate in 2009, 38 students are from India or of Indian origin. The Indian contingent has pipped the one from Canada, which usually has the maximum representation. The number of students from Canada has remained constant at 35 for the graduating batches of 2008 and 2009. According to, HBS assistant director in MBA career services, Kurt Piemonte, “Increasingly, we find Indian students want to head back to the country to pursue their careers. There is a real interest in India and the trend of returning to India to work is catching up. The number of students who have not been in the US before and want to return to India to work is rising.” Apparently, this also holds true for second generation Indian students, for whom the only link to India is their parents are also opting to work from the country. HBS alumni in the country have taken keen interest in familiarising HBS students with India during field visits, he added. As is well known, about 15% of HBS’s faculty are either from India or of Indian origin, making them the highest international representation after the US. Today, many of these professors teach cases based on frontline Indian companies like TCS, ITC e-choupal and ICICI Bank. In addition, HBS also holds an India conference annually and invites business leaders from India to share their perspective. Also, as part of its plan to globalise its curriculum, in 2005, HBS opened the India Research Center (IRC) in Mumbai, one of the six research units across the world. The research centre will help build HBS’s knowledge about the Indian economy and the corporate sector through case studies and original research work. HBS plans of offer its first executive education programme in India in February 2008.

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Chicago GSB Announces Creative New Way For Applicants to Present Themselves

To enable prospective full-time MBA students to present a more complete picture of their candidacy, applicants to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business will now submit up to four slides about themselves with their application, the school announced today.

In announcing the new requirement the school noted that prospective students are asked to supply facts about themselves throughout the application, but the slides will allow applicants to be creative and tell the admissions committee about themselves using a medium that parallels the communication tools used for professional and social networking.

“This is a departure from the text-only application that we used in the past because under the old format we were unable to capture important information showing how prospective students define themselves,” said Stacey Kole, deputy dean at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

The slides may contain pictures, graphs, text, or anything else that prospective students want to include, according to the school.

The requirement applies to students seeking to start the MBA program in September 2008. Applicants must still submit two traditional essays as part of the application process in addition to a maximum of four slides.

“There is no right or wrong way to satisfy the new requirement,” said Rosemaria Martinelli, associate dean for student recruitment and admissions for the school’s full-time MBA program. “The important thing is that applicants can express themselves in ways they could not before in essay form,” she said.

In today’s business environment, communication is fast and concise, Martinelli said. “Whether it be e-mail, PowerPoint, or a two-minute elevator speech, successful businesspeople need to learn how to express their full ideas in very restrictive formats. We feel the new application requirement represents this very common challenge,” she said. “But instead of using this tool to sell a product or request new business, applicants are using it to present themselves.”

In addition to the slides, applicants for next year’s entering class must also answer two essay questions. The first essay, limited to 1,500 words, is: “Why are you pursuing an MBA at this point in your career? What are your personal and professional goals and the role an MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business plays in your plans to reach these goals?”

The second essay, limited to 500 words, asks: “If you could step into someone else’s shoes for a day, who would it be and why?”
“Feedback from our current students shows that one of the unique things about our MBA program is that it challenges people to think in different ways and to be prepared for the unexpected,” Martinelli said. “We keep that in mind as we select our essay questions. The new requirement for slides just takes that to another level.”

The slides submitted with the application will not be judged on technical ability but rather the self-expression that is revealed, the school said. “Slides allow people to stretch beyond just the written word and one inch margins into a different space where an applicant can be much more expressive,” Martinelli said.

“The slides will be printed and placed in each applicant’s file for review, which means all the bells and whistles such as Flash, video clips, embedded music and hyperlinks won’t be considered in the evaluation process,” she said. “This clearly levels the playing field for everyone.”

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business is one of the leading business schools in the world. The school’s faculty includes many renowned scholars and its graduates include many business leaders across the U.S. and worldwide.

It is consistently ranked as one of the top ten business schools in the world and usually as one
of the top five. The Chicago Approach to Management Education is distinguished by
how it leverages fundamental knowledge, its rigor, and its practical application to business challenges.

Chicago GSB offers full-time and part-time MBA programs, an executive MBA program, a Ph.D. program, open enrollment executive education and custom corporate education.

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M.B.A. Programs Pay Off for Women Seeking a Return to Wall Street

Efforts on Wall Street to re-engage women who are trying to return to the work force, many of whom left for family obligations, have started to yield results.

During the last few years, some of the nation’s premier business schools began to address that demographic group with executive M.B.A. programs. Of those, perhaps the most encompassing is the annual program started last fall by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, with a curriculum that combined academics and career opportunities.

With a median age of 47 and an average of eight years out of the work force, 41 students — 35 women and 6 men — participated in the first Tuck program, known as Back in Business. Of those, slightly more than half have found high-level and often high-paying work, according to the program’s director, Anant Sundaram.

He said that of those, “one or two ended up with consumer products companies, four with nonprofit organizations and a dozen with banks or financial services firms.” Three others returned to their own businesses, one went on to graduate school and another “had great offers but has postponed getting back into the work force.”

Those in the program said that the biggest issue facing them was not whether their skills were rusty; rather, it was the confidence that they had lost while not working. As Diana Allan, a graduate, said when polled by another program graduate, she realized that she should “never apologize for being out of the market.”

Several Tuck graduates landed at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citi, where Hans Morris, an early champion of the program, was chief financial officer of the markets and banking division before becoming president of Visa Inc. in September.

One, Janine Abbatecola, 40, a 1989 Cornell graduate who left her job at Credit Suisse in 2003, landed at Goldman Sachs, she said, because of Tuck’s “career evening where eight, nine companies, one of which was Goldman Sachs, came.” She subsequently “came to an event at Goldman, wound up connecting with a recruiter and meeting with a group, and everything took off from there.” She took a job as a vice president in Goldman’s equities division, a position similar to the one she had held at Credit Suisse. (Goldman has hired six other women through its own initiative for those who have taken career breaks.)

Another Tuck participant, Bette Rice, 50, joined Merrill Lynch in the late 1980s but left in 2002 when “my kids were in middle school,” when she was a director working on fixed income products. Ms. Rice decided to try the Tuck program when her daughter was applying to college, and she found that it “contributed a lot to the soft skills — how to put together your approach to re-entry and to think through the job market, my skills, résumé and core competencies.”

While she interviewed at several places, she decided in January to return to Merrill Lynch.

Not all of the Tuck graduates have joined Wall Street firms. Some have opted to try their hand at entrepreneurship while others, like Anne Donoghue, turned to the nonprofit world.

Ms. Donoghue, a publicist, did some consulting work after being laid off at Warner Brothers in 2001, but she devoted time to her nieces and nephews after her brother-in-law died in the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The program, she said, “gave me the confidence that I had something to contribute.” Ms. Donoghue, now 44, eventually decided that she wanted to work at a nonprofit organization. She learned through a networking site that the American Kennel Club was looking for a director of publicity.

While the need to explain their career gaps was not an issue, the women interviewed said, compensation, as expected, was a question. Those interviewed said their pay at least equaled their earlier earnings.

As Catherine Tanelli, 46, who now works in Citi’s investment banking division put it: “If you do the math, and look at straight numbers, my salary is higher now although it is five years later. I don’t know what it would have been had I stayed, because I probably would have had one or two promotions, with commensurate salary increases. My new position is as if time stood still.”

While there are many successes, Professor Sundaram said that consumer products companies have been more reluctant to hire those who have taken time off. “In part, many organizations don’t have champions like Hans Morris,” he said, adding that “some in H.R. have trouble dealing with this demographic and are struggling with how to appropriately place these people.”

Tuck is not the only business school with this type of executive program. Harvard Business School, for example, has had a program for its alumni for five years. Wharton started its first program in March, according to Professor Monica McGrath, who is directing the program.

Professor Sundaram said that the Tuck faculty is now reviewing applications for the next class, set to begin this month. He said that Tuck would adjust the program slightly this year, concentrating more heavily on refreshing financial knowledge as well as career skills, with less emphasis on leadership. The program has three sessions — two on the Dartmouth campus and one in New York. The cost is $13,500, but more than half is underwritten by corporate sponsors, which this year include Citi, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and MetLife. The participants pay for the rest.

While Professor Sundaram is pleased with the results to date, he acknowledged the difficulties in placing these high-level professionals. “It’s been a slog — out of 41 participants in the charter class, maybe 22, 23 are in positions close to what they are looking for. A handful, when confronted with the reality of the workplace, have recalibrated and decided they’re not quite ready. But there are a dozen who are very talented and hungry to do things, and who are, nine months later, still looking.”

Ms. Allan, 52, is one participant who is still looking. She said, “It’s a little harder to re-enter when you’re trying to change industries at the same time. It’s possible, because I’m talking to some people, but it’s finding the right fit — the right industry, the right level and where the job is challenging. The world is not as open to returnees as you would hope, but it’s getting there. I’ve been pleased with how people look at the résumé and accept that’s what I did.”

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