Often, when speaking to a student interested in applying to an MBA program—any MBA program—I find myself doing a bit of psychological counseling when we get to the undergraduate record evaluation. This is not necessarily because the student has a below-average UGPA, which sometimes is the case; no, what I find myself doing the most is arguing with the student as to the validity of their undergraduate major. Oftentimes, the first words out of a student’s mouth will be, “Okay, we need to do some damage control. I was an English major in college,” or “I know this is going to hurt me, but I was a psychology major.” These humanities, liberal arts, and social sciences students start committing academic hara-kiri before I even look at their transcripts. On the flip side, most students with economics, business, or business administration majors soar in to the process with an over-inflated sense of the merit of their academic credentials: “I know my GPA’s a little low, but I was a business major, so I’ve got that going for me.” Of course, this is not the case for all of my students, on either end of the spectrum—but I see this often enough that I thought it would be interesting to do a brief study and actually see if I could pinpoint that ever-ephemeral answer to the age-old MBA question: Which undergrad major or majors actually improve admissions chances—and which don’t?

What I found out was very interesting.

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The 2008 collapse of the Wall Street giants – AIG, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns, to name a few – coupled with the demise of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have done a number on the prospects of the financial MBA. Even just five years ago, landing a job in the investment banking sector of Wall Street was sometimes enough to guarantee you a low six-figure income straight out of college (not a mean feat in any economic climate), and a solid mid-six figure income out of business school. Fast forward to 2009, and it’s reality-check time: Wall Street and the finance industry are still reeling from a loss of over 200,000 jobs, over 60,000 of them in New York—and the jobs that are left certainly aren’t bringing in the huge bucks. Whereas the top b-schools used to send over 45% of their graduates on to join the private equity, hedge fund, i-banking, and consulting ranks, these numbers are quickly shrinking, and both newly-minted and prospective MBAs are being forced to find new and innovative ways to not only bring their knowledge to the companies that are hiring, but also make a living.

Even though the finance MBA is not dead, the jobs left standing in the aftermath of the financial collapse are no longer the ones Gordon Gekko would lose sleep over. The remaining large investment banks are still hiring—mostly positions in mergers and acquisitions, though (a popular field in an economy when bigger companies come to the rescue of smaller ones in danger of collapse). Regional banks and boutique firms are still strong: positions as portfolio managers, analysts, financial advisers, and—quite popular recently—credit risk management analysis are still available and popular. Smaller regional banks like BB&T and lenders like Buffalo, New York-based M&T are still looking for fresh talent. However, says Ed Fredericks, professor and career adviser at Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, “the jobs aren’t going to be as lucrative, exciting, or crazy as they were before.”

What does this mean for you, budding MBA? That the times, well, they are a-changin’.

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Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the final part of a seven-part series.

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Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the sixth part of a seven-part series.

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Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the second part of a seven-part series.

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Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the fourth part of a seven-part series.

(Read More...)

Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the third part of a seven-part series.

(Read More...)

Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the second part of a seven-part series.

(Read More...)

Triangles are commonly tested on the GMAT because they present many shortcuts for the savvy test taker. The makers of the GMAT know that the average student will rely on formulas and calculations, losing valuable time and possibly making careless mistakes. However, students who consistently report high math scores know the following tips and tricks for saving time and attacking triangles.  This article is the first part of a seven-part series.

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Rankings. They’re everywhere. Whether you’re applying to law school, business, school, college, or even high school, chances are there’s someone out there who’s come up with a rankings system. Their sheer ubiquity means that rankings are the one aspect nearly every applicant consults when making application decisions—and business school applicants are no different.

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For many students, Assumption questions are the most difficult type of Critical Reasoning problem. An assumption is simply an unstated premise of the argument; that is, an integral component of the argument that the author takes for granted and leaves unsaid. In our daily lives we make thousands of assumptions, but they make sense because they have context and we have experience with the way the world works.

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There are several types of answers that appear in Must Be True questions that are incorrect. These answers appear frequently enough that we have provided a review of the major types below. Each answer category below is designed to attract you to an incorrect answer choice, and after this brief review we will examine several GMAT questions and analyze actual instances of these types of answers.

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The key to weakening an GMAT argument is to attack the conclusion. But, keep in mind that to attack is not the same as to destroy. Although an answer that destroys the conclusion would be correct, this rarely occurs because of the minimal space allotted to answer choices. Instead, you are more likely to encounter an answer that hurts the argument but does not ultimately destroy the author’s position. When evaluating an answer, ask yourself, “Would this answer choice make the author reconsider his or her position or force the author to respond?” If so, you have the correct answer.

Because arguments are made up of premises and conclusions, you can safely assume that these are the parts you must attack in order to weaken an argument. Let us discuss each part, and the likelihood that each would be attacked by an answer choice.
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The word “except” has a dramatic impact when it appears in a question stem. Because “except” means “other than,” when “except” is placed in a question it negates the logical quality of the answer choice you seek. Literally, it turns the intent of the question stem upside down. For example, if a question asks you to weaken the argument, the one correct answer weakens the argument and the other four answers do not weaken the argument. If “except” is added to the question stem, as in “Each of the following weakens the argument EXCEPT,” the stem is turned around and instead of the correct answer weakening the argument, the four incorrect answers weaken the argument  and the one correct answer does not weaken the argument.

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The Sentence Correction section of the Verbal GMAT tests your ability to recognize and correct about thirty grammatical errors in long sentences. One of these errors is faulty subject and verb agreement. The makers of the GMAT use several types of sentence construction to intentionally mislead your when verifying correct subject and verb agreement. The first, and most common, is the use of phrases between the subject and the verb. The following article, which explains this sentence construction, is from the PowerScore GMAT Verbal Bible.

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