This week Accepted is pleased to host Laurie Stewart, Carnegie Mellon's Executive Director of MBA Admissions, along with other members of the Tepper community during an online CMU Tepper chat on Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:00 AM PT/ 1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT. Please join us in Accepted's chat room.

Coming up next Monday: London Business School Chat on Dec. 8, 2008 at 10:00 AM PT/ 1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT.

We also have posted in the last several days three transcripts from recent chats.

• 2009 Consortium MBA Career Chat with Jackie Olden
• 2009 MIT Sloan MBA LGBT with Deirdre Kane
• 2009 MIT Sloan MBA Military with Barry Reckley

A few other items I want to note: Anderson's MBA Insider's Blog has a succinct, informative post "Tips for Early Career (EC) MBA Applicants," by Admissions Director Mae Shores. Although the advice is intended specifically for Anderson, it really applies to most applicants with less than three years of experience to top programs that encourage EC's to apply. Chicago Booth also provides guidance specifically geared to early career applicants.

Finally, I feel remiss if I don't even mention the Mumbai massacre considering its cruel brutality and devastating impact.  Our sympathy goes out to all victims of this barbarism and our best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery to those injured by the terrorists. Clear Admit provides a round-up of the cancelled MBA admissions events in India as a result of the attack.

I am sure that some of our readers are personally affected or know someone who is. And of course there are people around the world who have lost loved ones. Terrorism is an international plague knowing no boundaries, using murder and mayhem as an obscene form of political expression.

I don't know anyone personally hurt in or affected by the attacks. My family and I do have a couple of good friends who knew the Holzbergs, the young rabbinic couple butchered by the terrorists. One friend was travelling in India and spent the Sabbath before the attack at the Chabad Center (formerly known as the Nariman House), in which several people perished. Another friend, who had lived in Mumbai for a year, found herself last Thursday helping her sister on her wedding day  -- and worrying about Rabbi and Mrs. Holzberg, who ran the Chabad Center and with whom she had enjoyed many a meal and chat.

At the end of a moving and terribly sad email, she writes "And to all of you reading this email, I ask that you do something good—something so kind, so good, and so loving, that it can in some way make the world hurt less. Because, little Moishe (the Holzberg's two-year-old son rescued by his nanny)  should not know the hate-filled world that his parents were murdered in."

There has been a lot of talk about the sudden dearth of financing options for international students who would like to attend American MBA programs. Some applicants are questioning whether to apply if they will have no way of paying for the degree. I decided to research the situation and find out just how bad it is.

Several schools have made it clear that they will still be offering no-cosigner loans to international students. For instance, HBS's MBA Admissions Director, Deirdre Leopold, stated outright on her Director's Blog that "International students at HBS will continue to have access to need-based loans without needing to find a US co-signer."

Rose Martinelli, Admissions Director at Chicago Booth, also stated unequivocally in her response (similar to her own blog post): "Chicago Booth is committed to providing financing options for our international students who do not have a US cosigner. I can assure our international students that we will have a new loan program in place by the time students enroll." International applicants considering HBS and Chicago can press onward with renewed optimism.

Rod Garcia, MIT Sloan's Admissions Director, made it clear that Sloan is committed to geographic and economic diversity in the class. Interestingly, Sloan was actually already in talks with other private lenders before Citi ended its Global Assist no-cosigner loan program, putting Sloan ahead of other MBA programs that didn’t anticipate the loan's demise. He expects that the details will be solidified and public by the end of January and that the new arrangements may even be better than the previous ones.

On the other hand, other schools are keeping their cards close to their chests; Stanford and Wharton both would only refer me to their websites. Stanford's site: "Loans offered to international students typically do not need a US co-signer" makes no mention of the sweeping changes in the US credit markets to reassure international applicants. Similarly, Wharton, in its reply to my inquiry, simply states that the school "is exploring a variety of options for making loans available to international students."

Some schools shared particularly appealing information with me. For instance, Tuck will be continuing with its own loan programs – one, DELC, allows a guarantor from outside of the US to guarantee the loan and another, The Tuck 5% loan, requires no co-signer at all. Beth Flye of Kellogg confirmed that Kellogg's no-cosigner loan (Option B of the NU International Loan Program), which it offers to international applicants from the University's own funds, will continue to be offered to all international students who demonstrate the need for it. In contrast, CMU Tepper told me that they haven't offered a no-cosigner loan for years.

In addition to the reassurances that these schools are providing, some schools are increasing the volume of aid they will be offering. Haas notified me that they will be distributing $3.2 million – an increased amount – in aid this year. Tuck has actually doubled the volume of aid they've provided since 2005 and Tepper has doubled the amount of aid it offers over the past five years.

All of the respondents encouraged international MBA applicants to pursue funding and scholarships from within their own countries – from private foundations (for instance, Brazil's Fundacao Estudar and Ling Foundation, Spain's Fundacion Rafael del Pino, La Caixa Scholarship, and Fundacion Ramon Areces, and Mexico's Brockmann Foundation) plus government-sponsored programs that provide loans and financial assistance to students attending graduate programs outside of their home countries.

My research is ongoing, and I hope other programs will provide more information in the coming days and weeks. In the meantime applicants considering applying to HBS, Chicago, Kellogg, Tuck, and MIT can rest assured that their loan options remain open. Applicants to Haas may have a higher chance of receiving a grant  covering a good portion of their educations and not requiring repayment, and Tepper applicants are no worse off than they were last year!

If there's one thing that became clear from my research, it's this: the top MBA programs will do whatever necessary to keep a high percentage of international students in their classrooms. As one admissions director told me, "This is keeping the deans awake at night!" Astute international applicants will take advantage of that determination and submit their applications this year while others wait for the smoke to clear.

Jennifer Bloom has been helping Accepted's international clients earn admission to the top MBA programs for the past 10 years. She is available to help you with your MBA application too.

BusinessWeek released its much awaited biannual, full-time MBA rankings. The rankings showed slight movement: Columbia went from #10 in 06 to #7 in 08. Wharton went from #2 to #4. Kelley climbed from #18 to #15.

Frankly, don't pay too much attention to the absolute ranking or even slight movement. Take advantage of BW's rich, informative database and fantastic resources for applicants. Then choose what's important to you and do your own ranking.

Top 30 U.S. Programs
1 University of Chicago
2 Harvard University
3 Northwestern University (Kellogg)
4 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
5 University of Michigan (Ross)
6 Stanford University
7 Columbia University
8 Duke University (Fuqua)
9 MIT (Sloan)
10 UC Berkeley (Haas)
11 Cornell University (Johnson)
12 Dartmouth (Tuck)
13 NYU (Stern)
14 UCLA (Anderson)
15 Indiana University (Kelley)
16 University of Virginia (Darden)
17 UNC - Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
18 Southern Methodist (Cox)
19 Carnegie Mellon (Tepper)
20 University of Notre Dame (Mendoza)
21 Texas - Austin
22 Brigham Young (Marriott)
23 Emory University (Goizueta)
24 Yale University
25 University of Southern California (Marshall)
26 University of Maryland (Smith)
27 University of Washington (Foster)
28 Washington University (Olin)
29 Georgia Tech
30 Vanderbilt University (Owen)

Top 10 Non-U.S. MBA Programs
1 Queens University
2 IE Business School
3 INSEAD
4 Western Ontario (Ivey)
5 London Business School
6 ESADE
7 IMD
8 Toronto (Rotman)
9 IESE
10 Oxford (Saîd)

BW bases its rankings on employer and student surveys as well as school research output or "intellectual capital."  This year for the first time, in a nod to the economic crisis, it is also including a ranking based on ROI and years to recoup the MBA investment. Not surprisingly, European schools, which tend to be one-year programs, are at the top of the chart. More surprising: HBS ranks 50 out of 50 in this chart. I guess assumptions matter.

The University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business announced today receipt of a gift valued at $300 million from alumnus David Booth '71. In appreciation, the university will rename the school The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

In an interview,  Booth described the gift as "largely unrestricted." 

According to Chicago's press release:

"The school plans to use the money for several new initiatives, including aggressively attracting and retaining star faculty. Other uses being considered include developing new faculty groups in academic areas not normally associated with business schools, expanding existing research centers, and launching ambitious programs to better leverage the school’s intellectual capital.

"The gift may also be used to expand the school’s international presence beyond its existing campuses in London and Singapore."

Previously, the largest gift to a business schools was $105 million, given to Stanford GSB by Philip H. Knight in 2006.

With layoffs on Wall Street and a contracting economy, MBA classes of 2009 are facing a very difficult hiring climate. Although many investment banks and other financial institutions are still recruiting, the number of financial institutions has declined and some banks are only recruiting half the number of students they recruited last year. Students, recruiters, and school administrators alike have expressed concern regarding the tight job market.

“If I was a second-year student I wouldn't be too optimistic," said Dan Waters, who was recruiting at a job fair at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Kellogg Assistant Dean Roxanne Hori said, "It certainly favors the companies to be more selective, which they're going to be in this environment because everybody's being more conservative in their hiring targets."

Despite Wall Street’s predicted loss of 45,000 jobs, Chicago Graduate School of Business Assistant Dean, Stacey Kole still expressed some reserved optimism, "We’ve seen firms go away and the level of M & A activity is down. But there is still a lot of demand for these folks." Some Business School graduates have already accepted offers, while others have been told that they must postpone their start at work. Still others face fierce competition from both their peers and from those who graduated a few years ago and find themselves back on the job market due to layoffs.

First year student, Ngaio Palmer, summed up the situation, "Most will have a job offer by the time they graduate, but it may not be their preferred company and it may not be their preferred location. But at this point, beggars can't be choosers."

If you are thinking about applying to B-School after being laid-off, please click on the link.