Anyone with a smart phone or an Apple device knows the benefit of the variety of apps that are available. As an MBA student, the use of certain apps can not only help you in your educational life, but they can help you prepare for your future career as well. Here are eleven apps we think every MBA student should have on their device:

The Wall Street Journal Mobile Reader

This live newswire is available for many models of BlackBerry. Any MBA student worth their salt knows that keeping current with WSJ will give them a leg up in the industry.

Documents to Go

For Android, BlackBerry and iOS, this application allows users to view and edit various types of files: PDF, PowerPoint presentations and Microsoft Office documents.

Evernote

Users of Android, BlackBerry and iOS can organize photos, text, spoken information and screenshots with this application. For those that utilize different types of media in their studies or work assignments the app is a great organization tool.

Dropbox

Use the application like you use the folders on your laptop. The big difference here, though, is that if your laptop crashes you can still access all of your documents on your mobile device or from any other computer by simply signing into the Dropbox app or website.

Dragon Dictation

Perfect for students on the go, simply tap the icon to open Dragon Dictation and begin speaking. You can see your words appear instantly on your screen! Dictate emails, documents and even text messages.

Bloomberg

The business and financial worlds are in the palm of your hand with the Bloomberg app. Coupled with the WSJ app, you’ll never be at a loss for up-to-the-minute financial news again. Users can create a customized list of stock markets, allowing them to monitor developments in whichever markets they choose.

Date Wheel

Unlike other organizer applications, this app gives countdowns so you know exactly how much time you have before your next assignment is due. The app makes it very easy to see which tasks and assignments should be taking priority over others.

PDF Reader Pro

Every student knows that professors love PDF files. The reader allows you to open any PDF file with the simple tap of an icon. No more waiting until you get back to the apartment and boot up your laptop to read these important files.

iWork

The application combines three programs: Pages, Keynote and Numbers. If you’ve ever had to create a multi-functional presentation, you’ll quickly realize how handy this app is. Pages can help you create brochures, Numbers is great for spreadsheets and Keynote is fantastic for flow charts and diagrams.

The Economist

Although it’s only available for iOS, we still love it. Our favorite feature is the ability to listen to the articles through your headphones. This is extremely useful when you are commuting and don’t have time to sit and read an entire article.

Skype

Not only will the app allow you to keep in touch with friends and family at home, it is quickly becoming the preferred method of communication for business meetings, study groups and tutoring. Skype does not force you to use a webcam so attending a meeting or conference is entirely possible in the comfort of your pajamas!

Andy Anderson is a career counselor and writes for a Business MBA site, featuring extensive information and listings for the best HR MBA programs available.

The Economist challenges the conventional wisdom on the usefulness of an MBA education (from Philip Delves Broughton)

Business schools have long sold the promise that, like an F1 driver zipping into the pits for fresh tyres, it just takes a short hiatus on an MBA programme and you will come roaring back into the career race primed to win. After all, it signals to companies that you were good enough to be accepted by a decent business school (so must be good enough for them); it plugs you into a network of fellow MBAs; and, to a much lesser extent, there’s the actual classroom education. Why not just pay the bill, sign here and reap the rewards?

The problem is that these days it doesn’t work like that. Rather, more and more students are finding the promise of business schools to be hollow. The return on investment on an MBA has gone the way of Greek public debt. If you have a decent job in your mid- to late- 20s, unless you have the backing of a corporate sponsor, leaving it to get an MBA is a higher risk than ever. If you are getting good business experience already, the best strategy is to keep on getting it, thereby making yourself ever more useful rather than groping for the evanescent brass rings of business school.

Business schools argue that a recession is the best time to invest in oneself. What they won’t say is that they also need your money. There are business academics right now panting for your cheque. They need it to pad their sinecures and fund their threadbare research. There is surely no more oxymoronic profession than the tenured business-school professor, and yet these job-squatting apostles of the free market are rife and desperate. Potential students should take note: if taking a professional risk were as marvellous as they say, why do these role models so assiduously avoid it?

Harvard Business School recently chose a new dean, Nitin Nohria, an expert in ethics and leadership. He was asked by Bloomberg Businessweek if he had watched the Congressional hearings on Goldman Sachs. He replied: “The events in the financial sector are something that we have watched closely at Harvard Business School. We teach by the case method, and one of the things we’ll do through this experience is study these cases deeply as information is revealed over time so we can understand what happened at all these financial firms. I’m sure that at some point we’ll write cases about Goldman Sachs because that’s how we learn.� He could have stood up for Goldman or criticised it. Instead he punted on one of the singular business issues of our time. It is indicative of the cringing attitude of business schools before the business world they purport to study.

When you look at today’s most evolved business organisms, it is obvious that an MBA is not required for business success. Apple, which recently usurped Microsoft as the world’s largest technology firm (by market capitalisation), has hardly any MBAs among its top ranks. Most of the world’s top hedge funds prefer seasoned traders, engineers and mathematicians, people with insight and programming skills, to MBAs brandishing spreadsheets, the latest two-by-twos and the guilt induced by some watery ethics course.

In the BRIC economies, one sees fortunes being made in the robust manner of the 19th-century American robber barons, with scarcely a nod to the niceties of MBA programmes. The cute stratagems and frameworks taught at business schools become quickly redundant in the hurly-burly of economic change. I’ve often wondered what Li Ka-Shing of Hong Kong or Stanely Ho of Macao, or Rupert Murdoch, for that matter, would make of an MBA programme. They would probably see it for what it is: a business opportunity. And as such, they would focus on the value of investing in it.

They would look at the high cost, and note the tables which show that financial rewards are not evenly distributed among MBAs but tilt heavily to those from the very top programmes who tend to go into finance and consulting. Successful entrepreneurs are as rare among MBAs as they are in the general population. They would think to themselves that business is fundamentally about two things, innovating and selling, and that most MBA programmes teach neither. They might wonder about the realities of the MBA network. There is no point acquiring a global network of randomly assembled business students if you just want to work in your home town. Also, they will recall that the most effective way to build a network is not to go to school, but to be successful. That way you will have all the MBA friends you could ever want.

They might even meet a few business academics and wonder. Then they would take their application and do with it what most potential applicants should: toss it away.

Researching business schools is akin to trying to find oneself. Reflecting on what one wants to get out of a degree and the type of business school experience desired is key. Admissions directors say it’s not too different from gazing into a crystal ball.

“Think about how the degree will advance your career, the job you’d like to have, and your lifestyle. Then consider your preferences of location, personality of the school, the kind of alumni it produces.”

After some introspection, an applicant can start talking to others. Informational interviews with those who have the jobs you’re seeking is a great way to confirm choices and find out about schools that specialize in those areas, says Edwards.

“Really explore your career goals,” she says. “It will help you in the application process, but also down the road in the job search.”

Job Placement Info

One mistake many applicants make is failing to look at the list of recruiters and job placement statistics of particular schools before applying. Then, when they enroll in the business school, they are disappointed by the job opportunities presented to them, says Scott Shrum, director of MBA admissions research at Veritas Prep, a Malibu (Calif.)-based provider of GMAT test prep and admissions consulting services. This is particularly hard on international applicants, who attend U.S. business schools in the hopes that the MBA program will help them land a job stateside and are disappointed when they wind up back home.

To get a handle on recruiting and job placement, applicants can consult the detailed information on many schools available at sites like MBA.com or the schools’ profiles on Businessweek.com, where a comparator tool allows applicants to compare placement stats, and even top recruiters, at various schools.Many schools also post placement data online, including Harvard Business School, but not everyone is as forthcoming.

Questions for Alumni

Another great source of information about prospective MBA programs is the program’s alumni. Most schools will connect applicants with alumni in their chosen fields, but there are other sources, including LinkedIn and similar social networks, that allow for sophisticated searches by industry, company, even job title.

When talking with MBA alumni, applicants should ask them about the recruiters they met on campus and how the school helped with the job search. These initial encounters with respected professionals will help applicants develop a network and could lead them to potential recommenders, says Sara E. Neher, assistant dean for MBA admissions at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business.

Once applicants have spoken with alumni and have a clearer sense of what they’d like their post-MBA life to look like, they should head to the Internet. Distinguishing between legitimate sources and garbage is more difficult than it seems, if for no other reason than the sheer amount of content.

Brand names are usually a safe bet. For example, organizations such as the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, internationally recognized publications, and the business schools themselves have built up their expertise and reputation.

Opinions on the Web

“Admissions officers are a great source of information for the admissions process, but not necessarily for the experience of the school,” says Shrum. “They’ll give you O.K. answers, but students and recent alumni are better for those questions.”

Still, students and alumni are sometimes trained by the school on what to say or write, says Neher. That is why, she says, it is best to ask sources if the business school is limiting what they share with prospective students in any way. It doesn’t hurt to ask pointed questions designed to elicit a negative answer—such as “What’s the biggest problem with the career services department?”—and to pursue alumni contacts who may be off the school’s radar and willing to offer another perspective, such as an unemployed graduate.

B-School Rankings

One of the biggest and most influential sources of business school information are the various business school rankings, such as those published by the Financial Times, The Economist, and Bloomberg Businessweek’s Best Business Schools. Although most admissions experts agree that the rankings are a good starting point, they want applicants to keep these lists in perspective.

Wise applicants, says DelMonico, use the rankings as one tool to get them started in making a broad list of attractive business schools and to determine what their chances are at each. As they continue their research, they should use the funnel approach to whittle down their list until they have the four to six programs to which they will apply. What applicants never want to do is limit their options or be close-minded to all the possibilities. Considering a wider set of schools, at least to start, is the best way to find the right business school.

Firsthand Experiences

Face-to-face meetings and school-sponsored events can help applicants better understand the nuances of each program. Most business schools host events in various regions and provide online videos and photos. These are suitable ways to bolster your business school research to make informed decisions about admissions, says Neher.

A campus visit allows for more opportunities to talk with students and administrators, to get a firsthand look at what everyday life would be, and to sit in on a class.Even though no school requires a visit, Shrum says admissions committees are impressed when applicants make the extra effort and incorporate in their application essays and interview answers specifics about the school’s culture or offerings that they gleaned from a visit.

MBA Programs and Executive MBA Programs sometimes have a similar curriculum, but the class format and admission requirements vary.

Different for different prospects: The EMBA course is aimed at experienced executives who prefer not to take a career break to take a full-time MBA and typically require significant business experience to gain admission. The regular MBA course is generally taken by candidates with relatively lesser work experience. On the other hand the EMBA course is generally taken up by experienced people who want to augment other skills/knowledge areas. Read the rest of this entry »

Having an MBA gives you the great opportunity to advance your career and increase your income. If you are in a mid-career level who are waiting for a good career opportunity to move your career to next higher level, taking an MBA is a good decision because an MBA will certifies you as a master in business administration. With the MBA qualification, you are putting yourself to a competitive edge to grab any good opportunity which may open to you along your career path. With the available of online education, you have more options to choose whether your want to pursue your MBA traditionally or earn it through online MBA program.

The worry about whether degree earned through online education can be widely accepted in the job market is not valid anymore since many job market survey reports have proved it’s accepted by most employers. The only question is whether you can fully benefits from online education if you choose to pursue your MBA online.

If you are already in the workforce full-time, and the constraint of your commitments and obligations might keep you from earning your MBA in traditional way. Online MBA may be the best way to allow you to continue your job and earn the degree at the same time. Moreover, selecting an online option to pursue your MBA, you do not need to worry if you need to travel for job assignment, or can’t finish your job on time for classes, because you can logon to online classes from anywhere and at any time, you plan for it.

Basically, you can benefit from the advantages of online MBA as most of online MBA programs do take into consideration factors that best fit the working adults. But, one downside of taking your MBA online is you will lose the interaction with professors and other students face-to-face. It’s becomes more difficult to build a network with your colleagues which will be very helpful contacts throughout your career. However, if you can create relationship with your online instructors and online classmates in cyber-environment, you can make up for some of the loss interaction.

Choosing an online MBA school is an important step when selecting your MBA program. You should not simply choose one because if you accidental select an MBA program offered by diploma mill, you will not only lose your money, but the worthless degree issued by diploma mill won’t help you in grabbing your career opportunities later. Do your homework about each online business school that you’re considering. Information such as accreditation by which the accrediting agency and what other people talk about these schools on internet can be a good reference in your decision to choose one of the MBA programs that best suit your interest.

Since, many online MBA students failed to complete their MBA program with all sort of reasons, don’t let you be part of them. In order to be a success online MBA student who will complete the MBA program and earn the valuable degree that will help in your career, you must be prepared to adapt yourself with the online learning style and have a self-motivation to push yourself through the online study process.

I started my career as an entrepreneur at twenty-four years old, right out of college. I ultimately built and sold a $250 million global scrap metal company, an experience I wrote about in my book Starting from Scrap.

After my book came out, I visited several U.S. business schools and met with MBA students to talk about my experiences launching a company in emerging markets. Many of the students who came to hear me speak were aspiring entrepreneurs in the process of getting MBAs. Many of them asked similar questions: “You didn’t get an MBA, nor did many other successful entrepreneurs, so if I want to start my own company, is business school a worthwhile experience? Is it worth paying all this tuition — or will my degree just be a resume-builder?”

I once had a conversation about this topic with Dr. John Yang, the dean of the Beijing International MBA program at Beijing University. Here’s what he had to say: “In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a matter of the heart, and education is a matter of the brain. It is difficult to teach a heart.”

I share his perspective. By definition, an entrepreneur is one who takes risk. It’s an attitude and an appetite, one which may be hardwired into one’s personality. Education can influence one’s attitude toward risk: for instance, understanding the principle of diversification or the long-term returns of equities versus bonds may make an investor more willing to create a “riskier” stock portfolio. But ultimately, can you teach someone to really enjoy taking risks? I don’t think you can.

When I think about the value of an MBA for aspiring entrepreneurs, I see a parallel with the military. Countries spend billions of dollars training soldiers so they’ll be ready for combat — they’re taught to fire rifles and operate in simulated high-pressure situations. But that training only goes so far. A Marine colonel once told me that he never knows how a soldier will respond — whether he’ll hide in his foxhole, run in the other direction, or stand and fight as he’s been trained #8212; until the bullets start flying. How someone reacts in times of great stress relies largely in instincts and the makeup of his or her personality — and training only takes you so far.

The same is true with entrepreneurship. Understanding strategy, finance and marketing can be very helpful. But it’s also important to possess self-confidence, a need for independence, energy and passion, curiosity, and an ability to communicate ideas. If you don’t have these natural assets, you’ll struggle as an entrepreneur.

I’m lucky, because those are personal attributes that I have. I don’t have an MBA, but I’ve picked up many of the business skills I needed during more than 15 years running a company. (My grandfather referred to me as having an MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, whose official colors are black and blue — an expensive education that makes Harvard Business School appear inexpensive by comparison). Many of the lessons I learned from those tough and painful experiences I might have learned in an MBA program — and if I’d learned them earlier, my company might have been even more successful.

As the HBR article makes clear, if I’d understood the use and importance of financial and inventory controls, I could have prevented millions of dollars in fraud. Perhaps studying cases about companies that had grown too fast and lost control of both their finances and the quality of their products would have encouraged me to expand at a more sober pace. We wasted years trying to re-organize after over-expanding and perhaps missed countless opportunities in the process. I could have saved or made a lot more money had I taken some courses in business law or venture capital financing. (We ended up getting strong armed by our investors, and they got away with it due to our early-stage naiveté.) I also would have benefited if I’d known more about human resources and the need for well-designed compensation and incentive systems. These are just a few of the tools you can get in business school — and they’re all tools I wished I’d had.

So I believe MBA programs do give future entrepreneurs valuable tools to help them mitigate risk and increase the probabilities of success. But even with those tools, only you know whether or not you have the heart to execute on the opportunities we all recognize to launch a compelling new business. That is when the real bullets start flying.

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/does_an_enterpreneur_need_an_m.html

The Best International Business Schools 2010: A lot has changed since the last time Bloomberg Businessweek ranked international full-time MBA programs. In Europe and Canada, placement rates and starting salaries for newly minted MBAs took a major hit, then began the slow process of recovery. Disgruntled students sent satisfaction scores plunging at some schools, while fickle recruiters switched allegiances at others. The result: France’s INSEAD catapulted from No. 3 in 2008 to the No. 1 spot, overtaking Canada’s Queen’s School of Business and Spain’s IE Business School, which were Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in 2008.

In the slides that follow, we lay out the winners and the losers in the top 10. But it doesn’t end there. This year we nearly doubled the size of the list, ranking 18 international schools in all. Click here for the complete ranking. Read the rest of this entry »

The job market for 2010 MBA graduates made a slow but steady recovery this year, beginning to rebound from one of the worst MBA hiring seasons in recent history. All but three of Bloomberg Businessweek’s 30 top-ranked full-time MBA programs saw improvements in the percentage of students landing jobs within three months of graduation, according to the latest data reported to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The news was not all good, though, with the schools’ results showing an MBA job landscape that has significantly altered in the past two years. A surge in hiring later in the school year boosted many schools’ placement numbers, but few are back to their 2007 placement levels of 2007, a headier time before the financial crisis, when the vast majority of students landed multiple job offers and fat signing bonuses. This year’s results were still welcome news to career placement officers, such as Read McNamara, executive director of the career management center at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management (Owen Full-Time MBA Profile), which had 87 percent of students placed by the three-month mark, up six percentage points from the year before.

FEWER SIGNING BONUSES

This year, on average, about 12 percent of graduates at the top 30 schools, or one in eight, still hadn’t received even one job offer by the three-month mark. That’s an improvement from last year, when one in five students were jobless three months after graduation. Salaries are flat or down at 23 of the 30 schools, with starting pay averaging $97,049, inching up only $549 from 2009. Meanwhile, the much-coveted signing bonus has also seen a fall from favor, with 23 of the schools reporting that the percentage of students with jobs receiving signing bonuses is down, some by 20 percentage points or more from the year before.

DISAPPOINTING SALARY OFFERS

Even in a tight job market, some recent graduates are not willing to compromise when it comes to compensation. The turnaround in the employment picture means that students like Hussain can be a bit more selective when it comes to the type of jobs they are angling for. Many of the top-ranked schools hit hard by the financial crisis last year have started to bounce back, including Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

FRUITLESS INTERNSHIPS

The hiring outlook did not look bright for the 2010 class last fall, when many students returned from summer internships without a job offer in hand. Recruiters were still showing up on campus but were hiring fewer students, leaving career services officers such as Wendy Tsung, associate dean and executive director of the MBA Career Services Office at Emory University’s Goizueta Busness School (Goizueta Full-Time MBA Profile), nervous about students’ prospects. “We went into the year very unsure about how it was going to play out,” she says.

She encouraged students to be more proactive about their job search, and her staff worked to develop recruiting relationships with companies the school had not worked with before. By the time the spring rolled around, a “second wave of recruiting” lifted the school’s placement numbers by 11 percentage points, to 93 percent.

SLUGGISH PLACEMENT RATES

Even with the start of a turnaround in the market, some schools have made little to no progress in improving their placement figures. At the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, the placement rate stayed flat at 22 percent, while the University of Maryland Smith School of Business and SMU’s Cox School actually lost ground. Smith’s three-month placement rate fell from 87 percent in 2009 to 81 percent in 2010, while a third of Cox graduates ended the summer unemployed, up from 27 percent in 2009, a deterioration in the placement rate the school blames on turnover in the career services office.

At the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, only 82 percent of the graduating class reported a job offer at the three-month mark, an improvement of just one percentage point over 2009.

Some people view an MBA degree the same way that Charlie thought about his Golden Ticket in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”: They believe a piece of paper can magically transport you to a place you only imagined. But can this addition to your résumé really be your dream ticket? Yes. No. Maybe.

MBA could get you hired in a tough economy

Let’s face it: If you had your pick between two candidates — one with a BBA and one with an MBA — who were both qualified for a job, wouldn’t you take the one with the higher degree? Read the rest of this entry »

Like every other aspect of lending, student loans have been dramatically affected by the credit crisis. But don’t believe rumors that you can’t get loans for education anymore. They’re still available — and you still need to be careful about how much debt you take on.

Federal student loans are an even better deal than before. Rates are fixed now, rather than variable, and students with the most need will see rates as low as 3.4% in the future. Limits on how much you can borrow have been raised a bit, and parents who take out parental student loans now can defer payments while their kids are still in school. Although some lenders have exited the federal student loan market, the U.S. government has stepped in to make sure the remaining lenders had access to cash to make loans. Read the rest of this entry »

For many MBA students, earning power is one reason, perhaps the main reason, for enrolling in B-school. So which programs really deliver the goods? Over the course of a career, what’s your MBA worth? The numbers will surprise you.

The slides that follow list the median cash compensation—base salary and bonus—for MBA graduates of each school who have less than two years’ experience, 10 years’ experience, and 20 years’ experience, as well as an estimate of total earnings over a career spanning two decades.

The upshot? According to data compiled for Bloomberg BusinessWeek by PayScale, a Wharton MBA has 90 percent of the value of a Harvard MBA. University of Chicago, 76 percent. University of Iowa? Forty-eight percent. Read the rest of this entry »

As part of Businessweek’s annual ranking of the top undergraduate business programs, senior business students from the 139 participating schools were asked to assign letter grades—from A to F—to their business programs in 12 specialty areas: quantitative methods, operations management, ethics, sustainability, calculus, microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, financial management, marketing management, business law, and corporate strategy. Based on those grades, scores were calculated for each of the ranked schools in each area.

Not surprisingly, the top-ranked schools in the overall ranking, published in March, have the most top-10 specialty rankings, as well. Notre Dame leads the way, appearing on eight top-10 lists, followed by Cornell University and Babson College —Nos.5 and 15 in the overall ranking, respectively—with six top-10 specialty ranks apiece.Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business (Goizueta Undergraduate Business Profile), the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (Wharton Undergraduate Business Profile), and the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill each ranked near the top of five specialty lists. Read the rest of this entry »

Natalie Grinblatt, director of the office of admissions and financial aid at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management, offers some tips for prospective applicants. She was interviewed by BusinessWeek Online reporter Mica Schneider. Following are edited excerpts from their discussion:

Q: Who’s the best candidate for Cornell’s B-school?
A: Someone who’s a leader. We look for a candidate who isn’t only going to succeed in our program academically, but who is going to lead. There’s a distinct leadership quality we look for: being able to assess a situation and seize opportunities or create new ones that have positive results for an organization. This requires independent thinking and collaboration. Both qualities are valued at the Johnson School. There are many people who can reach a goal, but we look for that extra something — the ability to make a difference.
Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Storer, director of admissions at the Boston University School of Management (Boston University Full-Time MBA Profile), has a decade of admissions experience to his credit, including a stint at the Harvard School of Public Health and four years at BU. In a conversation with BusinessWeek’s Rachel Z. Arndt, Storer talks about the great GMAT myth and why BU’s international diversity makes the School of Management stand out. An edited version of the conversation follows. Read the rest of this entry »

The Indian government is considering liberalization of higher education in the country, a move that would allow foreign universities to establish campuses in India. Check out this story from Monday’s Financial Times for more on the proposed changes. One angle that story misses: How the proposed reforms could help local schools. Consider one problem faced by the Indian School of Business, the B-school based in Hyderabad that is partners with Wharton and Kellogg and has just announced an alliance with Sloan. (For more on ISB, look at my story about the school in the current issue of Bloomberg Businessweek here.) Since ISB isn’t affiliated with a university, it can’t give MBAs to its graduates. Indian students don’t mind: Most of the other top B-schools in India can’t give MBAs either, and everybody knows that the piece of paper you get from ISB is an MBA in everything but name. Read the rest of this entry »

Most Valuable MBA Programs Ranking
MBA Programs Ranking By Three-Year Salaries
MBA Programs Ranking By Starting Salaries

US MIS Graduate Program Ranking 2009
List the top 20 MIS (Management Information System) graduate programs in 2009 ranked by USNews.

Tuition and Future Income Ranking Of US MBA Programs
Is a business school degree worth the considerable investment? Our ranking will help you make that determination by comparing the cost of attaining an M.B.A.–foregone income and tuition–to the prospect of a bigger salary. In short, our study shows which schools offer the best return on your investment.

A Complete List Of US Financial Engineering Programs
A complete list of graduate Financial Engineering/mathematical finance Programs in United States.

No GMAT MBA Programs?
Harvard Business School, Standord and MIT Sloan has announced that they no longer require MBA applicants to submit GMAT scores. Is this a no-GMAT trend?

List of US and Canadian MBA Programs that Accept GRE Scores
According to ETS, the following business schools in United States and Canada accept GRE General Test scores for admission to their MBA programs…

If you’re the type to take advice from country and western songs, then you no doubt already know that it’s a big mistake to let your kids grow up to be cowboys. Now I’m beginning to wonder whether the same injunction holds true for business majors.

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which surveys college and university career services offices nationwide, the highest-paid disciplines are not in business. In fact the top 10 are all in engineering, computer science, and information systems. Not a business discipline in sight.

How bad is it? Well, when Bloomberg BusinessWeek compiled its ranking of the top undergraduate business programs, we asked all 111 schools for the average graduate’s salary. It turned out to be $48,311, topping out at MIT Sloan (Sloan Undergraduate Business Profile), where the median starting salary was $62,000.

In the NACE survey, that was more or less the average for all bachelor’s degrees ($48,351)—suggesting that business undergrads, which for years enjoyed a significant pay premium over many other disciplines, no longer do.

And when it comes to the engineering disciplines, business is a clear also-ran. Here are the NACE numbers:

Petroleum Engineering: $86,220
Chemical Engineering: $65,142
Mining & Mineral Engineering: $64,552
Computer Science: $61,205
Computer Engineering: $60,879
Electrical/Electronics & Communications Engineering: $59,074
Mechanical Engineering: $58,392
Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering: $57,734
Aerospace/Aeronautical/Astronautical Engineering: $57,231
Information Sciences & Systems: $54,038

Hmmm. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be business majors….doesn’t have quite the same ring. Now excuse me while I go study up on petroleum.

Source: BusinessWeek,by Louis Lavelle.

Source: Financial Times
Note: This is calculated using the salary earned by alumni today, course length, fees and other costs, including the opportunity cost of not working for the duration of the course.

Source: Financial Times

** Note: The average alumni salary today with adjustment for salary variations between industry sectors. This figure includes data for the current year and the one or two preceding years
where available.

Global MBA Programs Ranking By Three-Year Salaries

Source: Financial Times

Note: The average alumni salary three years after graduation. (The 2010 ranking surveyed the MBA class that graduated in 2006). This figure includes alumni salary data for the current year and the one or two preceding years, where available.

Within regions, there are substantial differences in salaries offered across industries. The chart below shows the salaries offered in different industries within the US and Canada. Salaries in the US are consistently slightly higher than those in Canada.

Consulting traditionally offers the highest salaries in the region and averages $97,000 in 2009. However, in the USA this year, it is the Government sector which reports the highest average salaries at $100,500. Telecoms reports an average of $95,000, Pharmaceuticals are reporting an average of $93,000. Financial Services and Energy are both reporting average salaries of $91,000. Details are shown below (Source: QS TopMBA.com International Recruiter Survey 2009)：

Salary stagnation was a major concern for candidates this year as the gap between supply and demand widened. Recruiters have the bargaining power to determine how many jobs they will post and at what level they will set MBA starting salaries. However, employers surveyed stated that they planned to maintain salaries at 2008 levels.

The definition of entrepreneurship vary. Here are some examples:

Entrepreneurship, the pursuit of opportunity beyond the resources you currently control, is now a subject with segmented interest across a wide variety of fields and topics, including new venture creation, venture capital, social ventures, business model innovation, open software, internet, corporate entrepreneurship, global business, and biotechnology. — Haas School of Business

The concept of entrepreneurship was first established in the 1700s, and the meaning has evolved ever since.
To some economists, the entrepreneur is one who is willing to bear the risk of a new venture if there is a significant chance for profit. Others emphasize the entrepreneur’s role as an innovator who markets his innovation. Still other economists say that entrepreneurs develop new goods or processes that the market demands and are not currently being supplied.

In the 20th century, economist Joseph Schumpeter viewed entrepreneurship as a force of “creative destruction.” The entrepreneur carries out “new combinations,” thereby helping render old industries obsolete. Established ways of doing business are destroyed by the creation of new and better ways to do them.

Business expert Peter Drucker took this idea further, describing the entrepreneur as someone who actually searches for change, responds to it, and exploits change as an opportunity. A quick look at changes in communications – from typewriters to personal computers to the Internet – illustrates these ideas.

From Business Week (JAN 04, 2010): Six universities have joined a new program of “no co-signer” loans for international students at U.S. B-schools, and more are on the way.

By January 2009, Booth School of Business became the first school to sign onto the Affiliated Loan Program for Students (ALPS), a pilot program financed by Deutsche Bank (DB) which makes it easier for international students to come study in the U.S.

Nearly a year later, the loan program is starting to gain traction at schools across the country. A number of top schools signed on to ALPS in 2009, including Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, the University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business, and UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management, among others. Six universities and 15 graduate programs are now using the lending program, most of them business schools. The program holds appeal for international students because it doesn’t require them to have a U.S. co-signer to take out a loan, a crucial requirement for many students, schools say.

Over the past year, ALPS has so far issued about 3,500 loans to foreign and domestic students, and loan volume is upwards of $100 million, organizers say. Business schools are not the only ones taking an interest in the loan program; graduate law and medical programs are also taking note, and more schools are expected to join in 2010, says Kevin Moehn, president of Moehn & Associates, the loan program’s administrator, who’s in the midst of signing agreements with at least four other universities.

“As a result of the global financial crisis, we saw some of the country’s most prestigious schools struggling to replace student loan funding that had been restricted or discontinued by previous lenders,” says Brettschneider in a statement. “By utilizing our resources to create and invest in ALPS, Deutsche Bank is able to help students around the world further their education despite the challenges of the current lending environment.” says Fred Brettschneider, head of global markets for the Americas at Deutsche Bank.

The ALPS program is by far the largest of the business school international student loan programs currently available, and it replicates some of the popular features of the old loan programs, such as not requiring students to have a co-signer or established credit. Interest rates for the student loans are less than 10%, though rates vary depending on the school, and organizers hope rates will be even lower in 2010.

Some features of the program also make it especially appealing to graduate schools. For example, the program leverages a participating school’s credit rating, not its cash, to meet the level of student financing that the school determines. Schools also don’t incur any up-front expenses and don’t need to commit to any minimum or maximum level of loan volume, though they are required to act as co-signers on the notes for the loans, which students obtain from Liberty Bank, an Ohio-based lender. Deutsche Bank purchases the student loans from participating universities and bundles the loans into securities, which are then sold on the capital markets.

It’s a tough time to be starting a career and this year has been extremely rough: a new report shows that new college graduates had 40% fewer job prospects. And the outlook for 2010, while better, is still not very promising.  Jobs for graduates with bachelor’s degrees, which account for most new graduate hires, will drop nearly 1% next year, according to Michigan State University’s survey on recruiting trends.

Overall, hiring of grads with any degree will decline by 2% compared to 2009. ”Things fell apart really fast last year, but it looks like the job market for graduates has hit a bottom,” said Phil Gardner, director of MSU’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute, which conducts the annual survey.

Hiring of master’s degree graduates will plummet by 11% based on a weaker labor market for accounting students, the study said. But, jobs for Ph.D.s will spike by 20% and those for MBA graduates will rise 11%. A good sign for MBA students.

Large companies, those with more than 4,000 employees, plan to decrease hiring of all graduates by 3%, and medium-sized companies, those with between 500 and 4,000 employees, expect to lower hiring by 11%. Smaller companies, however, may provide a bright spot in the job market for new graduates.

Employers with fewer than 500 staff members said they expect hiring at their companies to jump by 15%. These companies will hire 11 new graduates on average in 2010, and 8 of them will be at the bachelor’s level.