The MBA Tour is launching its extensive offering of MBA admissions events on Tuesday September 4. The MBA Tour will travel from Buenos Aires to Moscow, Ho Chi Minh to Houston, and many other cities around the globe. For a complete list of events, dates and locations, please see the MBA Tour web site.

One of the innovative aspects of this year’s tour is a new alliance between The MBA Tour and MBAMilitary.net, which will result in a special MBA admissions panel discussion for current and former members of the US military. I spoke to Peter von Loesecke, CEO of The MBA Tour and a former officer himself, about the opportunities and challenges facing the roughly 1000 officers every year who elect to pursue an MBA. (The questions and answers are paraphrased.)

LA: Peter, I understand that at the Washington MBA Event on September 11, you and MBAMilitary.net have organized a special panel discussion for military officers interested in an MBA. Why?

PVL: We decided to host this event because the military officers are a special segment of the MBA applicant pool. Schools have significant interest in military people because of their experience, which is well-liked by the business community.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. In school, former officers excel. They typically are good classroom performers with outstanding time management skills. According to many of the admissions people I have spoken to and at least one dean, military officers challenge themselves, come to class prepared, and earn good grades.

LA: What is the make-up of the special panel?

PVL: Participants will be both admissions people and military alumni of top business schools. The panelists are well qualified to answer the questions specific to military applicants. These applicants want to know how their experience will be interpreted and appreciated both by schools and potential employers. They want to know which experiences they should highlight in their applications and how is their experience going to be viewed by industry after they have their MBA. Our panel will address these and other questions.

LA: In general, how is officer experience viewed by industry when combined in with an MBA?

PVL: Very favorably. In fact, salaries among military graduates are almost 35% higher than for the rest of the graduating class, and former officers tend to have twice the number of job offers.

LA: How do schools view non-US military experience?

PVL: I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t believe there would be a difference.

LA: Is a service academy education a major advantage?

PVL: Not really. The quality of the service is more important than a service academy background. There are three sources of officers: service academies, Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), and Officer Candidate School (OCS). Business schools don’t distinguish among graduates of these programs.

LA Do you have plans to expand the military panel beyond the Washington event?

PVL. We are starting with just the DC event because of the high number of military personnel in and around Washington, but in the future we are considering having similar panels at other events.

 

 

SAT scores dropped this year for critical reading, mathematics and writing. For critical reading and math, this was the second year of score declines. The College Board chose to emphasize the increased numbers and diversity of SAT takers in revealing data about test takers from the Class of '07, but the press focused on the score drop. Please see:

• SAT Scores Decline for Second Straight Year, as Experts Debate Cause from the The Chronicle of Higher Education.
• SAT Scores Down Again, Wealth Up Again, from Inside Higher Ed.
• Class of 2007 Logs Slide In SAT Scores from The Wall St. Journal.
• Math and Reading SAT Scores Drop from The New York Times.

Another piece of SAT news: In early 2006 The College Board admitted that roughly 4400 tests from the October 2005 SAT administration had been scored incorrectly. The inevitable law suit followed. That law suit has just been settled with The College Board and NCS Pearson agreeing to pay $2.85 million to settle. Members of the class who agree to the settlement can fill out a short form to receive $275 a piece or they can submit a longer form detailing why they feel they deserve more. Any money left after lawyer fees and settlement payments will go to charitable causes. 

Students who received wrong scores are clearly not going to get rich from this law suit, but I can't help wondering about the lawyers.

Dr. David C. Schmittlein of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School has been selected as the next John C Head III Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management. He will take office effective Oct. 15. Schmittlein served as Wharton's deputy dean for seven years and comes to MIT Sloan with an extensive background in both marketing and b-school administration.

The Utah State Bar has prepared advice for its members to give their young neighbors, relatives, and friends who seek pre-law admissions input from them -- members of the bar who haven't had anything to do with admissions in years. The law school admissions tips are excellent ,and if you click through, you will spare yourself the bad advice you could receive from a lawyer who isn't a member of Utah's bar and hasn't seen these tips.

 "When Lawyers Become Pre-Law Advisors" is a crash course in pre-law advising. But I take issue with one point on that list. The author, Eileen Crane, does not feel that location is important in choosing a law school. I disagree. While yes you can change your mind and location certainly isn't the only factor,  it is something to consider for a variety of reasons:

1. You will attend law school for three years, and you might as well like where you live.
2. Unless you attend a school with a national reputation, you are most likely to find employment near where you graduate. Or at least, you will find it easier to find employment near your law school. It isn't impossible to move to another state or region; it's just harder. So if you attend law school in a place you will like with the professional opportunities you find attractive, you may just end up there too.

Anastasia, author of the Ruby Red Slipper blog and a 3L, has an excellent post on the role of location in choosing a law school. It is part of a 3-part series she is writing on choosing a law school. I recommend it.

 

 

 

UC Berkeley announced today that Tom Campbell, the Bank of America Dean of the Haas School of Business, will resign effective July 15, 2008 after completing his five-year term. The former congressman announced no plans following his stepping down. He is committed to spending the next year continuing his efforts to expand the permanent, full-time faculty so Haas can improve its ratio of faculty to students and offer more and a wider variety of courses.

Haas announced two new faculty appointments:

• Nicolae Garleanu from the Wharton School, who will teach the core "Introduction to Finance."
• Terry Taylor from Columbia Graduate School of Business, who is a specialist in SCM, but will not teach this fall.

Haas previously announced the additions of Patricia Dechow in the Haas School Accounting Group, Dmitri Livdan in the Finance Group, and Jo-Ellen Pozner in the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group (OBIR). Brian Uzzi will also join the OBIR Group in January 2008.