Tips for International Admissions to U.S. MBAs

Ace! NewsFlash

With global interest in U.S. business schools up, make sure you have your bases covered.

While a report released Sept. 13 shows falling interest in attending graduate business school, more international students are pursuing M.B.A.s in the United States this year than last.

For the 2011-2012 school year, about two thirds of U.S. graduate business programs reported receiving fewer full-time M.B.A. applicants to their two year programs, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council's 2011 Application Trends Survey. But about 45 percent of those applicants were international students, up from 39 percent last year.

[Read more about findings in the GMAC 2011 report.]

In April, a separate study by the Council of Graduate Schools found that 4 percent more international applicants applied to business school in 2011 than in 2010.

[See which business schools received the most applications for 2010-2011.]

Applying to business school, a detailed process that incorporates proven testing skills and a solid track record, is tough enough for most American students. The complicated process can seem even more exacerbated for international applicants who are trying to complete the task from overseas.

[Use the U.S. News Higher Education Glossary to understand higher ed terms.]

The application process will vary by school, so it's always best to check with the admissions office of the school you're interested in before you apply. Still, there are a few universal notes international students who hope to study business in the United States should keep in mind:

1. Prioritize your testing weaknesses. For Jeff Liu, the GMAT and TOEFL exams posed challenges he had never faced in China, where he was educated.

"We think in a different system," Liu explains. "I practiced a lot to try to get used to the American way to take a test."

Make sure to allocate enough study time to master the GMAT. (This study timeline might help.) Put yourself in time sensitive situations, and take each practice test as seriously as you would the real exam.

If you're really struggling, consider a new alternative: the GRE, the U.S. screening exam used for most other graduate degree programs.

More than half of all business schools now accept GRE scores as an alternative, according to a recent study. It's a shorter exam that more heavily tests vocabulary than logic—though this could pose a different challenge to non-native English speakers.

[Read more about the differences between the GRE and the GMAT.]

Like the GMAT, the GRE may require a lot of practice.

"Prepare way in advance, and do it every day consistently," recommends a Yale international graduate student, who, after much practice, scored a 790 out of 800 on her verbal GREs. "You can't just say, 'I'm going to take the GRE tomorrow.'"

Keep in mind that, depending on English proficiency, applicants may also be required to take the TOEFL examination.

2. Seek out peer resources. Though the increasing number of graduate students may seem daunting, international M.B.A. applicants can take comfort in the fact that most likely there have been foreign students who have already forged paths at the prospective school and who may be able to offer support. Connecting with them, however, can be challenging.

"One key issue that many students face is finding a credible person, preferably someone who's international and has been through the same process that can share his or her experiences. It's difficult to find, because you go on forums; you try to stalk people on Facebook; and it's a tough process."

At EducationUSA advising centers such as Ace! The Academy for EducationUSA in Chiang Mai, advisors can guide students through broad, initial questions ("How do I reach my dream school?") and offer more detailed tips as the application process progresses. They also provide counseling for common pitfalls for international applicants, such as a tendency to be too humble in personal essays, as Asian students are typically trained, rather than writing proudly and effectively about individual achievements to U.S. admissions counselors.

3. Cover all your bases. A business school application isn't the only paperwork required to come to the United States At the University of Dayton School of Business Administration, counselors are now helping direct international applicants through the visa application process as well. Securing a visa is a crucial part of the process that ensures international students can arrive on campus, says the school's executive director of enrollment strategies, Molly Wilson.

"The visa can be one barrier for [an accepted student]," Wilson says. "They like us; we like them, but there's another outside entity that actually plays a role in whether or not they can actually come."

This type of practical guidance is increasingly common, she adds, as more schools seek to attract international applicants. That's now a concerted effort at the University of Dayton, where international student enrollment in the M.B.A. program has increased 72 percent since 2005.

"We all grow up in our own little bubble," Wilson says. "[International students] provide us with a much broader sense of understanding about people, about cultures, and about attitudes. It really makes the entire university campus more well-rounded and globally minded."

Adapted from usnews 22Sep 2011

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, AP, IB, TOEIC, IELTS etc http://acethai.weebly.com ***

The Evolution of U.S. College Dorms

Ace! NewsFlash

Student Seclusion

Before the information superhighway, schools were built around massive libraries, like the 400-year-old Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, above, in Britain. Early dorms were imposing, monastic structures meant to separate students from the outside world, providing more privacy for classes and introspection. This concept of the Ivory Tower lasted for decades. "If you look at the dorms of the Harvard Yard, the windows and doors are all on the yard side," says Jonathan Zimmerman, director of the New York University's History of Education Program. "Basically, what you see from the outside is a wall."

Bed-In

As student activism spread across campuses in the late 1960s, female students began protesting gender segregation — not only in the dorms, but at schools in general. Women at Barnard College in Manhattan, the sister school to Columbia University, staged several protests called "bed-ins" to demand equal access to education. (Despite the protests, Columbia continued to deny female students until 1983.)

More Buck, More Bang

While state and federal funding dwindles and demand for college degrees continues to rise, tuition rates have soared — as has the need for better amenities to justify the higher expense. From 1995 to 2004, just 17% of the 113 residence halls constructed on college campuses were traditional dorms, according to the Association of College and University Housing Officers International; the vast majority were apartment-style suites. This fireplace, at the newly opened Vista del Campo Norte dormitory at the University of California at Irvine, was built by American Campus Communities, one of the nation's largest student-housing developers
.

An Uphill Battle

Tanning salons, pool waterfalls, Mongolian grills, and hot tubs large enough for 15 people are some of the amenities offered at colleges across the country — like Boston University's new 35-foot climbing wall. Sandy Baum, a senior analyst for the College Board, says students are driving the trend: "It's not so much colleges wanting to be country clubs, it's students who want to live in country clubs." At this summer's conference for the Association of College & University Housing Officers, administrators swapped stories about the more outlandish requests they've received. (One tale involved a freshman who wanted to know about housing accommodations for his butler, who had accompanied him to the dorms).

Luxury Learning
Though La Vista del Campo Norte seems at first glance more like a hotel than a dorm, Bill Bayless, CEO of American Campus Communities, says these buildings aren't just real estate opportunities: "Our properties are not Animal House. There are no kegs out by the pool." Nowadays, students demand privacy, technology and the same amenities they grew up with, he says. "It's what the student expects when they leave Mom and Dad's."

Big Business
American Campus Communities surveys students each year to find out what they like. Since 1996, ACC has developed more than $1.5 billion in properties for university clients, and has acquired in excess of $2 billion in student-housing assets. Some critics argue such grand accommodations distract students from college's real purpose. "The undergraduate university experience should be about getting kids to answer the basic question, 'What is a life worth living?'" argues Jonathan Zimmerman, director of New York University's History of Education Program. "By making all these lovely things for the kids, we're answering that question for them."

Rec at Rockoff
Rutgers University's $55 million Rockoff Dorm features a Coldstone Creamery, a 7/11 and a state-of-the-art gym; residents also enjoy grocery delivery, room cleaning and laundry services. One hitch: Rockoff is only open to juniors and seniors. "If you have all the things you need in your own unit, you never go outside," says Joan Carbone, Executive Director of Residence Life at Rutgers, who believes traditional dorms offer the best environment for freshmen interaction. And while some schools use high-end housing to draw prospective freshmen, Carbone says Rutger's academic record is appealing enough: "We don't have to go into the arms race to attract students."

Bucking the Trend
Not everyone agrees with the luxury-dorm fad. At Berea College in Kentucky, school administrators have adopted a unique approach to the problem of strangled budgets and coddled kids: Dorms are furnished by the college crafts workshops, cafeteria food is provided by the school's farm, and students are required to work 10 hours a week in various campus jobs. "It's about identity and the culture you want to develop," says Gus Gerassimides, the college's assistant vice president for student life. "Ultimately every community has choices to make. It's who you choose to be."

Time.com, Aug 2011

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, AP, IB, TOEIC, IELTS etc http://acethai.weebly.com ***

10 Best Entrepreneurship Courses of 2011

Ace! NewsFlash

University courses in entrepreneurship are better—more useful, more real, more likely to produce actual companies—than they have ever been. Here are 10 we’d love to take.

From the April 2011 issue of Inc. magazine

Angels in Training  The students in this class at Willamette University have $100,000 to spend financing new businesses.

Stanford's new entrepreneurship class is not for the faint of heart. Launchpad is designed around a series of hurdles: the elevator pitch, the functional prototype, week after week of sales results. After each hurdle, students are force-ranked, so someone always lands on the bottom. Midway through the semester, the class stages a trade show at which venture capitalists stroll around writing fictitious checks. Some students make out like bandits, while others are publicly stiffed. For the lesson on presentation skills, a television news crew is invited to record three-minute segments about the aspiring entrepreneurs' companies. Students feverishly practice and polish. Then the reporter shows up. "Sorry," she says, "I can only give you each 30 seconds." Panic, mad cutting, and humiliating performances ensue.

Oh, and all the companies are real, because students incorporate within the first two weeks. So failure is never just academic. "It's all about building up your tolerance for risk," saysPerry Klebahn, an associate consulting professor who, together with professor Michael Dearing, designed and teaches Launchpad. "Entrepreneurship does not require an IQ. You just need to be able to fail, learn, compost, and move forward."

The ubiquitous assertion "You can't teach entrepreneurship" was probably accurate back when schools fielded chiefly sterile exercises in business-plan writing. But increasingly, universities are devising innovative classes that emphasize experience over study and seek teaching moments in misery, messiness, and unpredictability. Academic concepts like effectuation—which emphasizes entrepreneurial ingenuity and improvisation—and a new, dynamic approach to business modeling are among the ideas drawing professors toward a fluid style of pedagogy that feels more like life. Often it is life; students may emerge with embryonic companies in addition to their grades.

Following is a portfolio of 10 outstanding entrepreneurship classes, distinguished by their excellence (most have won awards or been adopted by other schools), their innovation, and their ambition. You won't, by the way, find the excellent Launchpad on the list, but that is only because we chose another Stanford course instead, and we wanted to limit ourselves to one course per school. We also wanted to avoid overlap of focus, so the list includes, for example, only one class on developing new technologies, though our research identified several that are excellent. With more room, we could easily list another two dozen classes, among them The Founder's Journey at MIT, Virtual Enterprise at City University of New York, and Markets in Human Hope at the University of Virginia. For aspiring founders with questions about the value of entrepreneurship education, the answer is clear: The modern classroom definitely has something to offer.

Best Courses 2011: Founders' Dilemmas at Harvard Business School

Most entrepreneurship classes chase the strategy-innovation-finance trifecta. But people problems cause more than 60 percent of new-venture failures, research shows. Founders' Dilemmas dissects the people decisions entrepreneurs face at critical junctures—particularly in the beginning. Read more

Best Courses 2011: Technology Venturing at Ohio State

The inventor-entrepreneur is a romantic figure. But plenty of companies thrive by commercializing the inventions of others. Technology Venturing builds businesses around sophisticated technologies that have not yet found commercial uses. Read more

Best Courses 2011: Foundations of Managing and Entrepreneurship at Babson College

Marketing, finance, operations, and HR can be studied separately. Entrepreneurship encompasses them all. So Babson College, a business-oriented school in Wellesley, Massachusetts, introduces its entire freshman class to the subject of business by having students start one. Read more

Best Courses 2011: Mayfield Fellows at Stanford University

Each year, a dozen Stanford students get front-row seats for business drama at its most compelling. Mayfield Fellows spend a third of their nine-month class interning in young Silicon Valley companies, where "anything you can imagine happening in a high-growth, high-impact company has happened," says Tina Seelig, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. (Seelig teaches the class with Tom Byers, who created it in 1996 and is the program's academic director.) "We've had changes of leadership, patent disputes, moving into new buildings. Last summer, a company went public. One year, we had two companies go out of business." Read more

Best Courses 2011: Entrepreneurial Selling at the University of Chicago

Though marketing courses are legion in business schools, sales classes are hen's-teeth rare. That's one reason Craig Wortmann's class feels so refreshing. Read more

Best Courses 2011: The Launch Pad at the University of Miami

Some entrepreneurship classes live in business schools. Some live in engineering schools. The University of Miami's Launch Pad lives in the career center. "When students come in to talk about 'What should I do when I graduate?,' we advise them to think about their careers along a continuum, from working for someone else to starting their own business," says William Green, dean of undergraduate education. "Instead of treating entrepreneurship as something you do instead of a job, we treat it as a job." Read more

Best Courses 2011: Sustainable Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces at the University of Illinois

Both the socially conscious and the profit-minded see opportunity in a global market of up to four billion people living in poverty. Yet in most entrepreneurship classes, financially comfortable students develop products for customers who look a lot like themselves. Read more

Best Courses 2011: New Ventures at Willamette University

Investors excel at sizing up entrepreneurial companies, because they see so many.Rob Wiltbank wants students similarly exposed. So while half his M.B.A. candidates at Willamette, a small liberal-arts school in Salem, Oregon, are launching start-ups, the rest are evaluating start-ups while embedded with angel groups. "We are learning entrepreneurship from both sides of the table," says Wiltbank, an associate professor at Willamette. Read more

Best Courses 2011: NUvention at Northwestern University

Most entrepreneurs possess deep knowledge of their industries. So why shouldn't entrepreneurship classes be just as specialized? That's the logic behind NUvention, a group of classes that focuses on three verticals: medical devices, energy, and Internet businesses. Read more

Best Courses 2011: SU's Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans With Disabilities

Michael Haynie wouldn't dream of reality-checking his students with the possibility of failure. He teaches disabled veterans, whose confidence was shattered along with their bodies. "Our challenge is twofold," says Haynie, an assistant professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. "We must give them the tool kit to start a company and help them believe they can succeed." Read more

*** Ace! is a member of the EducationUSA global educational advising network affiliated with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. We provide free EducationUSA counseling services to students in the northern provinces of Thailand; our faculty of U.S.-trained Test Prep Experts can help you with cost-effective result-driven training programs for SAT-1, SAT-2, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT, GED, AP, IB, TOEIC, IELTS etc http://acethai.weebly.com ***