Salaries are down by 25%, international offers have dried up, and at some top business schools nearly half the graduates can't find jobs
By Alison Damast
Students at Indian business schools are having just as hard a time as their American counterparts landing jobs after graduation, and they are facing one of the most painful recruiting seasons in years, according to a new report.
The job placement figures this year at nearly a dozen ofIndia's top management schools—including four Indian Institute of Management campuses (IIMs)—are more dire than expected, according to the highlights of the 2009 MBA Placement Report, released on Apr. 22 by MBA Universe, an India-based Web site about business schools.
It's a sharp reversal from last spring, when Indian B-school students had what was their best recruiting season ever. This year the average salary across top tier B-schools is down 25%, wiping out the record 20%-to-22% salary gains students made last year.
A. Kumar, the site's editor, said the global financial crisis is having a serious impact on the morale of Indian students.
"Students who saw MBA admissions as the ticket to good jobs have started questioning the return on investment, perhaps for the first time in several decades," Kumar said in an e-mail.
The news comes at a time when many students from India are opting to study at business schools in their home country, rather than to go abroad to a U.S. or European school, as many have done in the past. Admissions officers at top U.S. B-schools reportapplications from Indians are down this year, with many worried about obtaining student loans and H1-B visas, as well as the strict hiring restrictions on any companies receiving federal bailout funds under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Meanwhile, the growing reputation of top-tier Indian business schools like the IIMs is making them a viable option for Indians who otherwise might have chosen to shell out $100,000 or more for a brand-name U.S. degree.
PLACEMENT PROBLEMS
But Indian students opting to stay at home will face significant challenges ahead, especially when it comes to landing a job. At many business schools, career placement officers anticipate the hiring season will continue long after graduation, extending into the summer and perhaps beyond.
Even top-tier schools like the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad have extended their job placement season indefinitely because only 57% of students have found jobs, according to anApr. 2 report in the Business Standard, one of India's leading business newspapers. The school has not yet released its official placement numbers, according to the MBA Universe report. A spokeswoman from the Indian School of Business did not return several e-mails seeking comment about placement results.
Complicating matters, "the picture is dull" for students looking to land jobs outside of India, according to the report. The best international offer at any of the IIMs came from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, where the highest salary topped out at $86,785. At the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, the highest international offer was $83,000, down from last year's peak of $280,000 to $360,000. Meanwhile, schools outside the top 20 are facing an even harder time placing students, Kumar said.
"The second- and third-tier schools will see a constant struggle until the economy revives," he said.
Abhishek Nagaraj, 22, a first-year student at IIM Calcutta who is interning at an investment bank in Mumbai, is spending his summer working as an intern at a financial firm. Among his classmates, there is "this perception that we are at the bottom right now," he said, referring to the economy.
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The graduating class of Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad has not been fully placed and the procedure has been extended. “The ISB has set up a special task force with the support of our board members to continue to find the right opportunities and appropriate openings for its talented and experienced students,” said the school’s official statement.
Washington: As many as 1,00,000 Indians and an equal number of Chinese will return to their native countries in the next three to five years, a move that will greatly boost their economies and undermine technological innovation in America, a new US study warns.
The study on immigration by a team at Duke, Harvard and Berkeley universities led by Vivek Wadhwa, an Indian-American technology entrepreneur turned academic, says "America's loss is the world's gain".
There are no hard numbers available on how many have returned, but anecdotal evidence shows that this is in the tens of thousands, says Wadhwa, executive-in-residence for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University and fellow at the Labour and Worklife Programme at Harvard Law School.
"With the economic downturn, my guess is that we'll have over 1,00,000 Indians and as many Chinese return home over the next three-five years," said Wadhwa. " This flood of western educated and skilled talent will greatly boost the economies of India and China and strengthen their competitiveness.
"India is already becoming a global hub for R&D. This will allow it to branch into many new areas and will accelerate the trend," he said.
"The US has always had the luxury of being arrogant about immigration because it has been the strongest magnet for the world's best and brightest," but as the study shows "there are other strong magnets now".
"We are effectively exporting our economic stimulus. Policies like those which the US just enacted which prevents some banks from hiring foreign workers will have the opposite effect from what they intended - they will send jobs abroad and scare away top talent," Wadhwa said.
The study released on Monday Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, based in Kansas City, Montana, indicates placing limits on foreign workers in the US is not the answer to America's rising unemployment rate and may undermine efforts to spur technological innovation.
"A substantial number of highly skilled immigrants have started returning to their home countries in recent years, draining a key source of brain power and innovation," said vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation, Robert E Litan.
"We wanted to know what is encouraging this much-needed economic growth engine to leave our country, thereby sending entrepreneurship and economic stimulus to places like Bangalore and Beijing," he added.
The report builds on an earlier Kauffman Foundation report by Wadhwa documenting a queue of one million H-1B holders and their families anxiously awaiting longer-term work visas and growing frustrated with the immigration process.
Until recently, America has been the prime destination for the world's best and brightest immigrants.
"Immigrants have made tremendous personal sacrifices. They would leave behind relatives and friends and accept second-tier status in American society," said Wadhwa.
"Now countries like India and China are providing equal career opportunities and a better quality of life. So the most highly educated and skilled are often returning home," he added.
The two-year study covered 1,203 Indian and Chinese subjects who had studied or worked in the US for a year or more before returning home.
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As business models evolve, post-recession MBA jobs will, too, with employers looking for well-rounded types with strong leadership skills
By Eitan Ahimor
When trying to explain the regression that usually follows a chaotic event, Albert Einstein once said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." While the MBA job market may not revert to "sticks and stones," its future is likely to be quite different from what came after the last recession in 2001.
There is no doubt that the current recession will also be followed by an increase in MBA recruitment, but the nature of the opportunities offered to freshly minted MBAs will change. In the period following the dot-com crisis, companies sought MBAs with special skills and knowledge of niche areas, such as structured finance and private equity, as they strove to extend their business and gain market share by offering their customers sophisticated products and services. This strategy resulted from the flourishing capital markets, available funding, stiff competition, and increased consumer demand. Both MBA students and business schools were quick to seize upon these new market needs as many students chose to specialize in things such as financial real estate, financial engineering, advanced securitization, structured finance, and other exotic courses. Many MBAs saw business school as a gateway to a niche area instead of the place to develop leadership and general management skills like corporate finance, marketing, and operations. In our current recession, however, this approach is bound to change.
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HYDERABAD: Professor M. Rammohan Rao, who presided over the controversial meeting of Satyam’s board of directors approving acquisition of Maytas Properties and Maytas Infra on December 16, stepped down on Wednesday as Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB).
Explaining the reasons for his decision, he said the shocking revelations by Satyam Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju, of which he had no prior knowledge, meant that the controversy surrounding the Information Technology major was far from over.
“My continued concern and preoccupation with the evolving situation are impacting my role as Dean of ISB. Given that my term with the ISB anyway ends in a few months, I think that this is an appropriate time for me to step down,” he said.
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The Harvard Management Company has the enviable but challenging task of managing Harvard's mammoth endowment. As of June 30, 2008, HMC managed more than $45 billion, the vast majority of it endowment assets. (Here's HMC's annual report and data on its impressive recent performance.) HMC parcels out big chunks of the endowment to outside managers—hedge funds, private-equity firms, asset managers of all stripes—and its staff manages a large chunk itself.
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One of the management education world's greatest secrets is the wide variety of full-tuition fellowship programs at business schools. There are more than you might think—University of Virgina's Darden School of Business, for example, offers 61 full-tuition fellowships—and it is well worth taking the time to look into them during the application process. It could save you a cool $150,000, the average price for a two-year education at a top business school. We've rounded up some of the top schools' full-tuition fellowship programs, along with how to apply for them.
School: California Berkeley (Haas)
Name of full-tuition scholarship/fellowship: Haas Merit Scholarship; Haas Achievement Award; Maxwell Fellowship; White Fellowship
Number of full-tuition scholarships awarded to 2008 entering class: 14
How to apply: Automatic for Haas Merit Scholarships and White Fellowships; Haas Achievement Award requires optional essay as part of the application; the Maxwell Fellowship has a separate application.
Special requirements: Students must remain in good academic standing.
School: Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
Name of full-tuition scholarship/fellowship: Dean's Scholarship; Consortium Fellowship
Number of full-tuition scholarships awarded to 2008 entering class: Not available
How to apply: Dean's Scholarship automatic consideration; Consortium application
School: U. of Chicago
Name of full-tuition scholarship/fellowship: The Dennis W. and Jane B. Carlton Fellowship; The Distinguished Fellows Program; The Wallman Fellowship; The David W. Fox Fellowship
Number of full-tuition scholarships awarded to 2008 entering class: 11
How to apply: Most admitted applicants are automatically considered at the time of the appliation, but many have additional interviews that are required as part of the final selection process.
Special requirements: All of the fellowships have a mentoring component, whether corporate or alumni. The Distiniguished Fellows are mentored by a professor.
School: Columbia
Name of full-tuition scholarship/fellowship: Feldberg Fellowship; Kopf Fellowship; Project Charity Trust; Alexander Bodini Real Estate Fellowship; Margaret B. Greenawalt Scholarship Fund; Mario Gabelli Fellowship; Goldman Sachs Foundation; Heilbrunn Fellowship; Various Corporate Fellowships
Number of full-tuitiion scholarships awarded to 2008 entering class: About 25
How to apply: Automatically considered
Source: BusinessWeek
In recent years, admission officials at several top business schools, including the University of California at Los Angeles' Anderson School of Management and Duke, have found a growing number of lies and half-truths in the résumés they review. To be fair, it's hardly an epidemic: Administrators contacted by BusinessWeek estimated that, annually, just under 1% of business school applicants are caught faking it (though the actual number of fibbers could be much higher).
But as applicant pools widen and competition intensifies, résumé puffing is becoming a serious issue, says Mae Jennifer Shores, assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at Anderson. "These candidates are going to great lengths—sometimes too great—to differentiate themselves," she explains. "We [the admissions staff] have essentially become watchdogs."
Unlike buying live GMAT questions or plagiarizing an entrance essay, résumé puffing is something of a national sport. In fact, of 8,700 job applicants recently polled online by CareerBuilder.com, nearly 10% admitted to stretching the truth. During a separate survey of 3,700 hiring managers, roughly half said they had caught a lie on a résumé (BusinessWeek.com, 7/25/07). Of those, 28% considered the applicant anyway.
These numbers are "understandable," says Stan Walters, a leading lie-detection expert and author of The Truth About Lying, a layman's guide to lie-detection. When you're applying for a competitive position, he explains, "you naturally want to pump up your image." Late comedian W.C. Fields was more direct: "Anything worth winning is worth cheating for."
For less confident applicants, this edge is especially enticing. Top MBA programs attract premium prospects, most with sky-high GMAT scores and several years of experience. Accordingly, people with fewer credentials and personal insecurities "don't feel they're good enough," says Liz Riley Hargrove, associate dean for admissions at Fuqua. Albeit risky, résumé puffing is a quick fix: The difference between a "junior" and "senior" title, for example, is just two keystrokes.
During her 15 years at Fuqua, Hargrove has encountered a variety of embellishments. Some applicants inflate their job responsibilities. Others invent extracurricular activities. A few even write their own letters of recommendation and forge a professor's signature. "They're willing to gain an advantage by any means possible," she says. "And that includes making something up."
If caught, these prospects face harsh penalties. Options are school-specific, but most include: a phone call from the admissions department (asking for an explanation), a harsher examination of other application elements (GMAT scores, transcript, interview answers, etc.), and/or application dismissal. Adds Bruce DelMonico, director of admissions at Yale School of Management: "We take these things very seriously."
And with good cause. Part of the role of a business school, says DelMonico, is to train Corporate America's next wave of talent. Accepting people who have knowingly lied—in any capacity—is a dangerous investment. Just ask Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose own dean of admissions, Marilee Jones, was forced to resign last year after officials exposed her doctored education credentials. For weeks, the MIT brand was sullied by embarrassing press coverage.
Fuqua's Hargrove calls résumé puffing "unfortunate," and Anderson's Shores agrees. Yet both confirm it's tough to track. Who's to say, for example, that an applicant was treasurer, not secretary, of his business fraternity? Or that he spent five hours assisting a professor each week, and not 20? Short of calling every source, on every application, from every candidate, "we can't make sure information is 100% accurate," says Yale's DelMonico.
But they're getting close. At Duke, recommendation letters are now cross-checked at random, via personal phone calls. At UCLA, candidates submit contact information for all (alleged) extracurricular and volunteer activities. At Yale, applications pass through Kroll, a third-party verifier. After running a full background check, the service confirms each applicant's employment and education history, and résumé discrepancies are flagged for staff review. (Michigan State's Broad College of Business employs similar software.)
The goal, says Yale's DelMonico, is to "encourage veracity." If you haven't graduated summa cum laude or logged three years at a top-tier investment bank, be honest about it: According to Fuqua's Hargrove, most applicants who are caught embellishing "could have been accepted on their own merits." After all, a résumé alone won't get you into business school. But puffing one could shut you out.
Peg Jöbst, senior vice-president of GMAC, recently responded to such questions from the public and from BusinessWeek reporter Francesca Di Meglio during a live chat event. Here are edited excerpts from their conversation:
FrancescaBW: Peg, I thought you could first give us a brief overview of what has happened and the role GMAC is playing in this cheating scandal.
GMACPegJ: Certainly, Francesca. The Graduate Management Admission Council was awarded a $2.35 million judgment by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in a copyright infringement case against the operator of Scoretop.com, a U.S.-based Web site that sold access to questions used on the GMAT exam. GMAC seized the site's domain name on June 20, shut down the site, and obtained a hard drive containing subscriber information.
GMAC goes after those who try to cheat on the GMAT exam, because the council has an ethical responsibility to business schools and students to protect the integrity of the application process. GMAC sued Lei Shi and others who operated Scoretop.com, which offered forums where visitors could share information about the GMAT. The site promoted VIP memberships—$30 for 30 days of access—in which users were encouraged to read and post "JJs," for "jungle juice," the Web site's jargon for live GMAT questions.
FrancescaBW: What can subscribers and users of Scoretop expect to happen next?
GMACPegJ: GMAC is limiting its investigation to those individuals who a) posted GMAT questions they saw on their GMAT exam, and b) posted a message on Scoretop confirming that they saw items from the Scoretop Web site on their GMAT exam. In these instances, GMAC will cancel GMAT scores and notify schools to which those scores were sent.
saurabh_iiita: I have registered as a VIP member, but I never used or saw live questions, etc. What are the implications for me?
GMACPegJ: Based on what you have described, you would not fall into the category of those individuals we are investigating.
sarithababu: Do you have any comments about the pre-September 2006 version of the site and its users, vs. post-September 2006?
GMACPegJ: Our investigation criteria are not tied to versions of the site.
sarithababu: I got that dreaded e-mail. I was a VIP member. I discussed a few questions with no knowledge (still) of whether I am in violation. I am starting school this fall. I have left my job and planned my move. Should I put everything on hold and wait for your verdict on my case? Or go through the ordeal hoping GMAC will clear my name? In a way. it is none of GMAC's business. but this is what is on the minds of numerous students caught up in this mess, so if you can humanely provide response to this, it will be [appreciated].
GMACPegJ: GMAC is limiting its investigation to those individuals who a) posted GMAT questions they saw on their GMAT exam, and b) posted a message on Scoretop confirming that they saw items from the Scoretop Web site on their GMAT exam.
We realize candidates take the process of admissions and preparation for the GMAT very seriously. It is hard work.
For complete transcript, visit http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/jul2008/bs20080727_833217.htm
More than 1,000 prospective MBA students who paid $30 to use a now-defunct Web site to get a sneak peak at live questions from the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) before taking the exam may have their scores canceled in coming weeks. For many, their B-school dreams may be effectively over.
On June 20, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia granted the test's publisher, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), a $2.3 million judgment against the operator of the site, Scoretop.com. GMAC has seized the site's domain name and shut down the site, and is analyzing a hard drive containing payment information.
GMAC said any students found to have used the Scoretop site will have their test scores canceled, the schools that received them will be notified, and the student will not be permitted to take the test again. Since most top B-schools require the GMAT, the students will have little chance of enrolling. "This is illegal," said Judy Phair, GMAC's vice-president for communications. "We have a hard drive, and we're going to be analyzing it. If you used the site and paid your $30 to cheat, your scores will be canceled. They're in big trouble."
GMAC sued the operator of the site, Lei Shi, for using it to distribute copyrighted GMAT-related materials without GMAC's permission. Shi, who has reportedly returned from the site's base in Ohio to his native China, is under investigation by the FBI, GMAC says. Shi, who did not have legal representation for the GMAC lawsuit, could not be reached for comment.
While the consequences for students may be severe, the advantage they gained by using Scoretop is almost inconsequential. Unlike other GMAT test-prep sites, which use retired questions, Scoretop and others claim to provide access to "live" questions that test takers might encounter when they show up for the exam. Participants on the site would debate the proper answers. But the GMAT uses a computer adaptive format that generates a new test for every user based on responses to previous questions from a stockpile that contains thousands of possible questions. "Even if a site is illegally able to obtain some real questions, it is extremely unlikely that a test taker will see the same questions on the live exam," says Larry Rudner, GMAC vice-president for research and development.
Scoretop has been in operation since 2003. Visitors to the Scoretop Web site before it was shut down would have encountered posts from happy users and a list of "test experiences," users' firsthand reports about the most recent test questions. But on June 23, they found this message from GMAC: "GMAC takes cheating very seriously, especially attempts to obtain access to live test questions in advance of an exam. We also take very seriously any unauthorized distribution of our copyrighted GMAT preparation materials. If you are caught disclosing, accessing, or using 'real' GMAT questions your GMAT score will be cancelled [and] you may be subject to a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution."
The news about the cheating scandal was the talk of the annual GMAC conference in Chicago over the weekend, where the organization's President and CEO David Wilson described the latest developments for an audience of 700.
It's unclear how individual schools will respond. More than 4,000 graduate management programs use the test as part of the admissions process, but many of those using sites like Scoretop seek admission to the most competitive programs. So the fallout is likely to be limited to top schools.
Several schools, contacted June 23, said it was far too early to determine what fate awaits students or prospective students whose scores are canceled. "It's impossible to say at this point what that means," said Ed Anderson, Duke's associate director of admissions.
Joe Fox, director of MBA programs at Washington University's Olin Business School, said a lot depends on what information GMAC can provide about individual students, especially the frequency with which they used the site. "There's an infraction, that's for sure," Fox said. "At a minimum it flies in the face of our code of professional conduct. We could do anything we wanted—from a slap on the wrist to expulsion from the program—and we'd be well within our rights."
Since the Scoretop site has been in operation since 2003, it's possible that students with tainted GMAT scores are in the application process, currently enrolled, or already graduated. For those in the application process, the applicants may be rejected, and for those currently enrolled, expulsion is a possibility.
Several years ago, when a Chinese national was caught taking the GMAT for dozens of prospective students, one Olin student who had the test taken on his behalf was dismissed before he could complete his degree, Fox said. That's a possibility this time around, too. "I think it's fair to say we'll take this seriously," he added. "It could be the end of the line."
Source: Business Week
This year, close to 20 students are teaming up in different groups to start new business ventures.
Students are starting businesses ranging from nano technology firm to Photo wave Technologies to financial analytics and consultancy firm.
ISB also offers a two-year placement holiday for those who want to set up their own business.
Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) , on Saturday hiked the fees of its two-year post-graduate course (Business Management) from Rs.4,50,000 to Rs.11,50,000 from the next academic session joining in June 2008. IIM-Bangalore had also raised its fees to Rs 9 lakh for two years and IIM-Calcutta to Rs 6 lakh from the 2009-11 batch.
However, need based scholarships are available.
Hello fellow aspirants,
I wish to share with you the news of getting admit from Duke, ISB and LBS.
I thank Adcom at these schools, my present organization, my admission consultant at Apexwriters, various forums that I participated in (including but not limited to pagalguy and scoretop) and my family for their tremendous help.
This blog has helped me remain in touch with other aspirants, track the latest related news and make some friends. But, now I will move on to other things and I will not keep posting to this blog anymore. However, If anyone wants to access the GMAT material that I had downloaded from some resources on the net and uploaded , then you are welcome to join the Google group.
Best of luck to all the applicants.
Cheers,
Sana!
Who's really on the other end of the line during a phone interview? It could be the student on the MBA application—or a well-spoken cheater.
It used to be that business school officials couldn't necessarily tell one from the other. But now, with the widespread use of Webcams, one avenue for potential cheating—including coaching or having an imposter sit in for the applicant—is being narrowed.
While most B-school interviews are conducted in person, that's not always possible, particularly when candidates are living in other countries. And that's when the temptation to test the boundaries of ethics, such as referring to prepared notes or using a stand-in, can come into play.
No one knows how often it happens. Anne Cooper, the admissions director at University of Georgia's Terry College of Business said in an e-mail that she suspects—but can't prove—impersonation in one or two cases in each incoming class of about 120 full-time students. Cooper says the difference in a student's English-language skills once he or she comes to campus is an automatic tip-off.
"There's no way to confirm that you are speaking with the same person that shows up," Cooper says. "It's disconcerting when it happens, because you want to know that you're dealing with someone of integrity."
Starting this month, Georgia is requiring that phone interviews be conducted via Webcam. Several other schools, including Penn State, Arizona State, and Ohio State offer it as an option. While cutting down on cheating is just one of the reasons schools are adopting Webcam interviews, the technology has other benefits they're not ignoring.
"It's always suspect, in terms of dialogue, who's on the other end of the phone [line]," says Rudy Pino, the director of admissions at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business. Over the phone, interviewers listen for suspicious clues such as rustling paper, delayed responses, and requests for the interviewer to repeat questions—possible indications that the candidate is searching notes for an answer or consulting with someone.
Pino estimates that every year close to 5% of about 160 full-time students receive an unethical amount of help—which includes anything from scripted answers to having a well-versed helper present during their phone interview.
Besides outright impersonation, its not really clear where the ethical lines in phone interviews are, admissions experts say. Even if it's not strictly forbidden, when admissions officials like Carrie Marcinkevage, the admissions director at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, get a scripted or delayed answer, they automatically become concerned about the applicant's ability to succeed in an MBA program. An applicant can use notes to "hide language deficiencies, glide over unfavorable parts of an experience they don't want to reveal, or worse, to give someone else's answer," Marcinkevage explains in an e-mail.
But Los Angeles-based admissions consultant Stacy Blackman says there are different expectations for a phone interview than for an in-person meeting. "I don't know that [script reading] is necessarily unethical if you prepared it yourself," adds Blackman who discourages her clients from reading word-for-word answers because that prevents them from coming across as genuine.
Webcam interviews also let schools record and store images for later use. Alison Merzel, admissions director at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business, another MBA program that officially started using Webcams this year, is impressed with the screening potential. "You can capture an image and compare it with their GMAT or TOEFL image; it gives you the option of having identification," she says.
Although Webcams have been around for years, the proliferation of VoIP technologies like Skype (EBAY) (BusinessWeek.com, 11/29/07) or Yahoo! Messenger (YHOO) means that MBA admissions offices can now see them as a feasible, low-cost option.
Mandy Stowers, a first-year MBA student at Ohio State who's on the admissions committee, says she hasn't received any negative feedback on their new Skype-based offering because of the applicants' familiarity with the program. Stowers predicts that more than half of this year's international students will choose Webcam interviews conducted over Skype rather than speaking via telephone and says that many candidates already had Skype IDs and simply had to log in. "It's been pretty positive—we've had people who scheduled phone interviews actually switch to Skype interviews."
Georgia's Cooper said the school has started using Cisco's (CSCO) WebEx technology, which has the capability for one-on-one interviews. With WebEx, an applicant can log in and schedule a date and time while having technical support readily available, says Cooper. And even though the service is costlier than just signing up for Skype, Cooper says the investment is worth it. "We wanted to find reliable alternatives, and I believe more schools will be moving in that direction."
The adoption of Webcams for admissions interviews is changing the rules in more subtle ways as well. For instance, with this technology an applicant can't interview for business school in his or her nightclothes. On the other hand, it's a little more forgiving than an in-person chat. For his Webcam interview with Penn State, Ross Cain combined his everyday shorts with a suit and shirt because he knew his interviewer wouldn't see below his computer desk. "I was kind of like the ESPN sportscasters," he recalls.
And exactly how you handle yourself during the interview is also a bit jarring. During a Webcam interview in December, Xiaoyu Zhang, a Penn State applicant from Shanghai, had a hard time deciding on how best to make eye contact with Smeal's Marcinkevage. Zhang had to look at the Webcam above the monitor, instead of into Marcinkevage's eyes on the computer screen. But other than a few mishaps, Zhang says the Webcam was worth it. "Via phone you can only convey 7% of the whole message—I can't use my hands, I can't smile." He's surprised more schools don't provide the option.
Another factor with Webcams: They give a glimpse into applicants' homes and work environments. So interviewees and interviewers have to think about set design. "I think you could do two things: take it in a very professional direction and draw the attention away from the background so all the attention is on you, or you could use the background to develop a sense of who you are," recommends Marcinkevage. (She's also had to modify her own interviewing space. Since starting the process in November, she's removed unkempt-looking binders from a shelf and found a new spot for her purse—both of which could be seen through the camera lens.)
But even though most admissions officials encourage in-person conversations that take place on campus, both applicants and interviewers are pleased with the Webcam. After the first year of conducting Webcam interviews, Merzel says Ohio State hopes to continue taking advantage of emerging video capabilities. "There's limitations, it's still not perfect," she says. "But we will move toward [using Webcams] as technology improves."
Shortly after New Year's Day, Pat Watkins, financial aid director at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., placed a worried call to National Education, a student loan company she has been working with for nearly two decades. She had heard rumors that the company was no longer funding federal Stafford and PLUS (Parent Loans for Undergraduate Students) education loans, but had received no official word from the company.
She found out that the phone of National Education's local rep had been disconnected. Later she learned that Chicago-based National Education was not planning to accept applications for new loans for the spring semester after Jan. 15, though they planned to fund disbursements for students who received loans for the fall.
That was the first surprise. In mid-January, Watkins received a letter from Phoenix loan company NextStudent saying they, too, would not be funding new Stafford or PLUS loans for the spring semester, only funding loans where there has been a fall disbursement.
At least one other student loan company, San Diego-based Goal Financial, has also pulled back their federal loan lending, according to college loan officials. Federal student loans are low-interest loans guaranteed by the federal government. Congress outsources many of these loans to private companies and has recently passed legislation that has eliminated many of the subsidies they gave these lenders to encourage them to participate and administer the federal loans.
"I haven't seen it this bad before," said Watkins, who has worked in the financial aid industry for 34 years. "It is going to put a lot of students in a bind." She said she will help students find a new loan provider, but for students with existing loans this will likely incur more costs and a second loan to be repaid.
Student financial aid season—which started on Jan. 1—is getting off to a shaky start. The industry is experiencing jitters as the fallout from the subprime credit crisis trickles down to lenders who make private loans, as well as companies that also issue federal loans. For the moment, the credit mess has had a limited effect on student borrowers, but experts said they expect students to be affected in the next few months.
For instance, students with poor or only decent credit ratings—those with FICO credits scores under 650—may encounter difficulty obtaining a private loan with reasonable interest rates or, for that matter, obtaining one at all. Loan companies may refuse, in some cases, to make loans to students at schools that have high default rates, financial aid directors said. And families that have relied on home equity borrowing to pay college costs may turn to private lenders as the home equity market tightens up (BusinessWeek, 1/16/08).
Students also may need to change their loan application tactics. In the past, students who were authorized account holders on their parents' credit cards could get loans with interest rates based on their parents' credit rating. They now will be required in most cases to apply for such loans with their parents as co-signers. Those applying for federal loans may also find their options more limited, as many major loan companies that work with the federal government temporarily pull out of the federal student loan program.
While the subprime crisis has created the most news, student lenders are also facing fallout from legislation passed by Congress last fall that eliminated nearly $19 billion worth of federal subsidies to student lenders. The combination of these two developments has made for a challenging financial environment for student loan operators, says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid, an online provider of student aid information. "The joke in the industry is that Congress took away half the profits, and the asset-based securities markets took away the other half," Kantrowitz says.
The $85-billion student loan industry is often criticized because of the large profits private students lenders make off of students by charging them high interest and origination fees. The legislation was propelled by student borrowers who wanted to see the subsidies issued to private lenders channeled back to federal student loans. As a result of the legislation, an additional $11 billion in federal aid is now available to students.
Financial aid officers are predicting that student loan applicants may find the process more daunting and complicated than in years past. As with the mortgage market, many private student loans are packaged and sold to investors as asset-based securities, leaving them vulnerable to aftershocks of the subprime credit crisis. For example, FinAid's Kantrowitz predicts that many companies will no longer issue loans to students with credit scores below 650 to protect themselves from any subprime exposure. In addition, loan companies will require more applicants to have co-signers. "I do expect it to be a little more difficult to get one of these private loans," Kantrowitz says.
Borrowers' worries extend even to the largest student loan lender, SallieMae (SLM), which is also cutting back on federal loans and concentrating more on the private market. Earlier this month, the company said in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing that in response to the financial environment, it would be "more selective" in making federal and private education loans. Since then the company has reassured institutional borrowers that it is in sound financial condition, according to a Jan. 17 report in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The decision by some companies to withdraw from the federal loan program could indicate that more lenders are hurting, said John Dean, special counsel to the Consumer Bankers Assn., an Arlington (Va.) group that represents bank lenders in the student loan programs. "This is significant because National Education and Goal Financial were well-known operations and were seen a couple of years ago as growing rapidly," Dean says. "We presume that if they are experiencing difficulty that others could be experiencing difficulty as well."
Representatives from National Education and Goal Financial declined to comment on the federal loan suspensions. Next Student did not return phone calls requesting comment.
Private loan companies' investment practices may have led to some "overexuberance" on the part of private lenders, says Robert Shireman, executive director of the Project on Student Debt, a group that focuses on student financial aid. Like Kantrowitz, he expects private loan companies to be more cautious when making loans to students.
In the meantime, financial aid officers are sitting back and anxiously waiting to see how the student lender landscape will shift if more loan companies continue to pull out of segments of the market.
Bill Witbrodt, director of student financial aid services at Washington University in St. Louis, says he has not seen students directly affected yet, but expects that could change. Plus, battered family finances could send more students into aid offices. Right now, students aren't reporting family financial stress from the credit crisis, Witbrodt says. "If this continues, I would expect it [to] and, in fact, I'm surprised it hasn't already."
Students facing the greatest difficulty in obtaining private loans are international graduate students, who are not eligible for any of the federal loan programs, says Rockne Bergman, manager of graduate and professional programs at University of Minnesota's financial aid office. He counsels international students seeking loans from the law, business, and nursing schools, among others, and says he has already seen the market tighten for them.
"These lenders are just being very careful as to whom they are lending to. And they want to make sure they will be able to get those loans paid back," Bergman says.
Financial aid officers like Eckerd College's Watkins say their greatest fear is that the lending environment will create a situation where students strapped for cash will take out risky private loans with sky-high interest rates, no matter what the cost. For example, Watkins says she has seen commercials on TV aimed at students with poor credit ratings and promising no interest or payment until graduation. Those loans tend to come with higher origination fees and higher, unpredictable interest rates that compound the amount students owe after graduation into a "significantly higher amount," Watkins says: "We haven't seen the full impact of this yet, but it is coming."
Job cuts and a looming recession threaten the hiring outlook, but the big banks and other employers don't plan to slow their recruitingby Alison Damast
It's turning into a nervous 2008 for soon-to-be MBAs. Many of the large financial institutions that business school students typically turn to for summer internships and job offers have posted large mortgage-related losses and announced layoffs in the past few weeks. Just last week, for instance, Bank of America (BAC) announced it would cut an additional 650 corporate and investment banking jobs, while Citigroup (C) said it planned to cut 4,200 jobs globally. Suddenly, the employment outlook is looking a bit more turbulent.
Up to now, the academic year has been good for MBA student job-seekers. Recruiters haven't stopped coming to campus to interview for summer internship jobs, career services officers said. Meanwhile, second-year students looking for full-time jobs appear to be doing as well as, if not better than, their counterparts last year, with many schools reporting increased recruiting, more job offers, and higher salaries for this year's grads. But that can all change in a hurry.
The challenging financial environment means students must be extra diligent when conducting their internship and job searches this year, said Tom Kozicki, board president of the MBA Career Services Council, the umbrella group of school career placement offices. "Those who are attacking the market aggressively, I think, will fare well whether the economy dips or not, but those who wait on the sidelines and hope for something to be delivered to them by their business school are the ones who will get caught if this market turns down," said Kozicki, who also serves as executive director of the career center at the University of California, Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business.
Brian Mirochnik, 26, a first-year student at the University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business is heeding that advice as he conducts his search for a summer internship. He wants to pursue a career in investment banking, specializing in leveraged finance, but realizes this year he might not be able to obtain a position in that sector, which has been beleaguered by job cuts and financial losses.
He has traveled to New York several times over the past few weeks to talk with nearly 50 investment bankers about the state of the industry. The news hasn't been heartening—they have told him there are about 40% fewer jobs in his area of interest. He has since changed his strategy and is now considering taking an internship in the corporate finance division of investment banking.
"I would be lying to tell you I wasn't nervous about the prospects, because I left a good career to come back to business school to go into investment banking," said Mirochnik, who worked as a commercial banker and entrepreneur before attending Rochester. "I think across the board people are nervous, but you can't let that affect how you go about the recruiting process."
This year's first-year MBA students have been anxious about the job market from the moment they arrived on campus, said Kenneth Keeley, executive director of the career opportunities center at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business.
But their fears have been somewhat assuaged by the large number of recruiters who have been on campus to interview students in the past few weeks, including Deutsche Bank (DB), Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Bank of America, he said.
"The early numbers again seem to be good. I think many firms will still want to have that pipeline for internships," Keeley said. "The real indicator of how the economy will impact the MBA job market will come next fall, when these firms decide how many offers to give to their summer interns."
So far, many of the big recruiters haven't shown signs of pulling back. For instance, the hiring strategy has not changed at Merrill Lynch—despite a huge $9.8 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2007, the largest quarterly loss in its history. Merrill plans to hire between 170 and 180 people for summer internships globally, said Sarah Quarterman, the firm's global head of campus recruiting. Last year, Merrill hired 190 associates, but that number was higher than average, said Quarterman.
The company takes a long-term approach to recruiting, looking ahead several years rather than tailoring their hiring to market conditions, she said. "I think some firms in the past have pulled out of recruiting due to market volatility and then reaped the consequences of that in two to three years' time," Quarterman said. "I think we're all a lot wiser now and realize that the people we hire this year are going to be the VPs of three or four years' time, so if we don't hire them now, we'll have a talent shortage."
Bank of America—which announced on Jan. 22 that its fourth-quarter profit had fallen 95%—is still an active participant in MBA campus recruiting, said Rick Parson, Bank of America's executive vice-president and global staffing executive. "While we have announced some workforce reductions in certain business units in this tough market environment, we still need to look for a variety of skills and diverse experience when hiring," Parsons said in an e-mail.
Second-year business school students appear to be in the safest spot for the moment. According to an Employment Trends Survey Report conducted this fall by the MBA Career Services Council, most of the 85 business schools surveyed reported a 20% increase in overall recruiting activity this fall over last year and a 14.9% increase in on-campus recruiting. The average full-time base salary for the class of 2007 increased by 5.5%, with an 8.8% increase in the signing bonus, the survey showed.
The data from that survey seem to be aligning with preliminary hiring figures at schools such as Carnegie Mellon, where nearly 78% of second-year MBA students already had job offers by Jan. 21, up about 10% from this time last year, according to Keeley. "The number of companies making offers is up, and that's a good sign to us," he said. "If that number was dipping, we'd be really concerned."
The employment picture also remains a question mark for undergraduates, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). As of last fall, employers said they planned to hire 16% more graduates in academic year 2007-2008 compared to the previous year, according to a survey released in November. Signing bonuses for undergrads are also up.
But that picture could change in the coming months, said Andrea Koncz, NACE's employment information manager. "We are hearing a lot, of course, about the economy and how it will affect the college job market," Koncz said this week. "We normally do another update survey in late March, but we're probably going to go out sometime in mid-February, just to see if anything is changing at all."
The school makes no excuse for its rigorous reputation. Students quickly learn how to work in teams and squeeze in meals, even pizza in a cup
by Scott Clemente
Pizza in a cup. This is by far the biggest innovation I've come across since starting classes 10 weeks ago. While I don't think you'll ever find this remarkable product in the aisles of your neighborhood supermarket, I think it does a good job of illustrating how busy first-year students at University of Virginia's Darden School of Business find themselves.
Let me explain. As a first-year, you quickly learn time efficiency. Between classes, working on cases, and attending various recruiting and club events, there is little time for anything else, including eating. It is the situation a friend found herself in three weeks ago. I was sitting in the library, working on cases for classes the next day, when my friend walked up to my table with her book bag slung over her shoulder and a coffee cup in her left hand. There was nothing unusual about this, but when she sat down I noticed what looked like a pizza crust sticking up over the top of the coffee cup. I asked her what it was, and she confirmed my suspicion that there was a slice of pizza stuffed pointy-side first into her cup.
Now, why would someone ever do that? Well, on this particular day my friend had gone straight through three classes in the morning, right into a presentation by PepsiCo (PEP) about its summer intern program, to a meeting for the marketing club. She had just enough time to pick up a slice of pizza from the cafeteria on her way to the library, where she was going to work on her cases before meeting with her learning team later that night (more on learning teams later). There was only one problem—food isn't allowed in the library. Her solution? Pizza in a cup. The cup concealed the pizza and allowed her to sneak it in.
If you talk to enough Darden students you will hear stories like this repeated often—from people doing laundry at 2 a.m. to a second-year who thought he lost his car keys only to return to his car and find them in the ignition…and the car still running! The dean of Darden, Robert Bruner, recently wrote: "Our reputation on Web chat boards and in the B-school rankings is that Darden's MBA program is the most demanding of all. We make no apology for that reputation." In short, it is intense.
School Days
A typical day at Darden starts off with your first class at 8 a.m. Afterward, the school meets for the Darden tradition of First Coffee, a brief informal gathering in between classes. It gives people a chance to socialize and catch up on any funny events from the previous weekend or any late-night study sessions. After First Coffee we have our second class, another break, and then typically a third class that gets done just after 1 p.m.
After classes we have from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. to attend any recruiting events, work on cases for the next day, and hopefully squeeze in some time for personal matters that need to be taken care of. It gets busy. I have classmates who put reminders in their Outlook calendars to call their parents out of fear of forgetting.
One for the Team
At 7 every night we meet with our learning team. This is a group of five to six classmates who are assigned to the team by the school. The team's purpose is to work through the cases for the next day's classes, and generally help each other learn. My learning team consists of six people, including Katie, a former AOL (TWX) communications manager originally from Tennessee; Ian, a professional cyclist and entrepreneur from Virginia; Vikram, a business developer from a software company in India; Jihyun, a television news director from South Korea; and Saul, a corporate development director from Spain.
Every night from 7 to 10 we attempt to bring our varied backgrounds and different points of view together to come up with solutions to such problems as: Did Apple (AAPL) make a mistake by cutting the price of the iPhone so quickly? How did Zimbabwe find itself in an era of 10,000% inflation and what can it do to get itself out of it? Is the Mirage Las Vegas (MGM) properly accounting for uncollectible accounts from its casino customers on its financial statements? All are real business problems and none have straight black-and-white answers.
Honing Co-Working Skills
Analyzing these problems is complicated by two factors. First, because of the case structure at Darden and the way classes are set up, you do the homework before you learn the lesson. The consequence of this is that you are constantly kept at the forefront of your learning curve and must initially struggle through the new concepts as you encounter them.
The second complicating factor is that when you put six people in a room, each with very different cultural and career backgrounds, and each used to having the right answer, you end up initially with what can best be described as a human train wreck. In our team, each person wanted to demonstrate their knowledge or skill in a particular subject and none of us ever wanted to admit that our answers were wrong.
As you can imagine, this led to a lot of wasted time. Indeed, the hours we spent debating whether the net present value of the investment in our decision analysis case was $1,567,524 or $1,567,526 are ones we'll never get back. However, over the first several weeks, each of us learned that we may not always be right. We learned to leverage each other's experience and background to not only learn from one another but perhaps take a different path to attack the problem at hand.
The end result is that now, as a group, we develop a deeper and more thorough analysis of any given case than each of us could have done individually. That's significant because at Darden it isn't enough to have the right answer. What's more important is to be able to explain how you arrived at that answer to the other 60 people who share your classroom at 8 a.m. the next day.
Direct, Invigorating Experience
These classes typically start off with another Darden tradition called the Cold Call, which occurs at the beginning of class when the professor calls on a student to give an overview of the case and begin the discussion. Some inside information for those of you who may end up here next year: If you ever find yourself unprepared to start the class off, when the professor scans the room deciding who to call on, maintain eye contact! I once made the rookie mistake of looking down at my computer when the professor looked my way. This is the equivalent of a wayward gazelle limping into the middle of a pack of lions. You can imagine how it ends.
After the Cold Call the class proceeds with a discussion of the case and the various analyses different people have come up with. Instead of lecturing, the professor guides the discussion and most of the talking is done by the students. It may not be the most comfortable way to learn but it makes for an incredibly interesting learning environment.
To date, my experience at Darden has reaffirmed my decision to come back to business school. The best way I can describe it is to quote author Michael Crichton. In his book Travels, he wrote how he would often take trips to various parts of the world to be reminded of who he really was: "Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends and your daily routines, you are forced into direct experience. That's not always comfortable but it is always invigorating."
In making the decision to pursue my MBA, I left behind my friends, my routine, a good job, and the overall comfort of home in Denver. I am working harder than I have in a long time but every morning I wake up in anticipation of the day, knowing that I am going to be challenged and that I will learn something new. The best is the stuff I never saw coming. Like if you have to, you can in fact eat pizza out of a cup.
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"If you are heading to business school in the fall, you should expect to hit a low point sometime in November"
by Sarah Baranowski
"You have got to be kidding me," I thought. I was sitting in an MBA information session the day after my GMAT. A busy schedule had just been laid out before me. It included challenging classes, center activities, networking opportunities—all kinds of things that I wanted in an MBA program. The workload was heavy, no question about it, but a little hard work doesn't scare me. What threw me was the rigid schedule. The lockstep course structure means that you take classes when they are offered; you do not fit your credit load or your class schedule to the other things going on in your life, whether professional or personal. Required evening events, like exams and reviews, are par for the course too. (Can you imagine what would happen in the typical office if a manager regularly scheduled meetings at 7 p.m.?)
At the risk of asking a dumb question, I raised my hand and said, "So what happens if you just can't make it to one of these things?" I was met with a perplexed look. "I mean, what if a student has another obligation at night that can't be rescheduled? Are there any options?" The answer I got threw me even more. The basic gist of it went something like this: If you have that sort of concern, then maybe you should reevaluate your priorities and decide whether an MBA is really something you should be doing. In other words, give yourself over entirely to the MBA experience, or don't bother getting an MBA. That moment was the first hint of things to come. I began to adjust my expectations.
A "Crazy Way to Live"
When I began the semester and started talking to fellow students, I realized that many of us are unable (or disinclined) to give up our other pursuits in life. Some of us have children. Some of us have jobs. Some of us are starting up businesses. Some of us have other academic studies or professional training to complete. Some of us have ties to family or community or causes that we want to maintain. The MBA is designed to consume every moment and then some, but plenty of people who belong in business school do not have every moment to give. Nevertheless, we all decided to forge ahead and make it work.
Now I have finished midterms, and I am closer to the end of the semester than the beginning. I am pretty satisfied with my progress. But before the halfway point, when exams are piling up and every waking minute is devoted to the program, the doubts creep in. You think, why am I punishing myself this way? You think, how did I end up here? You think, being a student is a crazy way to live. You think, I might not make it.
If you are heading to business school in the fall, you should expect to hit a low point sometime in November. Plan for it, because it will happen no matter what you do ahead of time. For my part, I started to see combinations of panic and fatigue on the faces in my cohorts first. I felt like I was doing reasonably well. Then midterms hit, and I fell apart. I realized that I don't know how to take tests anymore, especially tests that have anything to do with math (my last math class was more than 15 years ago). The stress plays out in everyone differently, but everyone learns one common lesson: the value of grace under pressure.
First semester is like a finishing school and a boot camp wrapped up in one package. On the finishing school side, I have decked out my wardrobe with formal business attire, learned lessons in business meal etiquette, and dressed up more often in the first couple weeks than I had in the past couple of years. Then to cover boot camp, add to the mix conditions of sleep loss, identity loss, and mounting pressure to perform well on demand. Like I said before, it is one long lesson in grace under pressure. Is it worth it? Definitely. But I need a reminder once in a while.
To that end, let me tell you, and remind myself, why the first semester is worth the stress, late nights, and self doubts. If you have a first semester in your near future, then you may want to bookmark this spot and come back to it around, say, Nov. 9 next year. Here it is—my personal list of reasons to stick with it:
Reason #1: You have earned a place at the table.
In the Wisconsin full-time MBA program, every student is a member of a center, which corresponds to a specialization. My specialization is Operations & Technology Management. Each center has an industry board comprised of executive-level managers who have expertise within the specialization. My center brought its industry board together for its annual meeting earlier this semester. The board is comprised of VPs, COOs, CIOs, and CTOs for the most part. All of the center's students were invited to sit in on the meeting. As I watched the day's activities, I realized the extent to which I was capable of participating in the discussions. I also happened to be deep in the thick of midterms and facing the cold fact that I am working my tail off just to pull Bs in some of my classes. It was fortunate timing; I needed a confidence booster. I left knowing that I belonged at the table. Grades didn't mean a lick.
Reason #2: You will never look at a business problem the same way again.
The amount of learning packed into a few brief months is amazing. At first it was overwhelming, and then exhilarating, and now (in November) exhausting. But in spite of my mental and physical exhaustion, I cannot question the value of what I have learned, and I find myself eager to begin putting these lessons to work on the job. On a similar note, the business fundamentals in the first semester have also validated my work experience. No book ever told me to ignore sunk costs, for example, but I knew it anyway from experience. It's gratifying to put a framework around intuition.
Reason #3: You meet all the right people.
It's great fun to be surrounded every day by a really smart group of people. It's even better when you get to see how different smarts tackle the same problem in different ways. With students, faculty, and business leaders in one place, and with perspectives that cut across industries and fields of practice, I have deepened my already healthy respect for the power of diverse thinking. First semester is a constant stream of new faces and new ideas; many of them are at the C-level or VP-level of management; some of the most valuable are sitting next to me in class.
Reason #4: It ends in December.
Can I keep up this pace indefinitely? No. Can I last until Dec. 20? Yes. The key is to work hard and get as much as possible out of the experience, knowing that the opportunity will not last. I cannot help but wonder if there isn't a way to prepare driven, intelligent people for roles as business leaders and strategists without pushing us to the breaking point. Perhaps it is too early for me to say. But one thing I know: it's all temporary. At the end of December, I will be enjoying the holidays with my family, and I can spend much of January recovering.
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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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