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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