Leading schools have decided a background in liberal arts should not be an obstacle to acquiring business education.
Carnegie Mellon University, Yale SOM, Columbia Business School and other prominent business schools are happy to give a hand to aspiring MBAs even if they majored in philosophy or social sciences. These institutions offer pre-study courses for those who wish to get the hang of all that tricky math before they enroll, P&Q reports.
Business Schools Make Math Easier
Those who will be getting their MBA at Yale SOM can brush up on their math before schools starts in September thanks to Yale’s three-day preparation program. According to Professor Jonathan Feinstein, even those who struggled with math before the camp gain a good understanding of this subject afterwards.
Tepper School of Business (Carnegie Mellon) invites roughly a third of its students to a special online summer math course. These students, who then will have to pass a final, possess good analytical skills, but didn’t have an opportunity to gain extensive math knowledge before applying to business school.
The same is done by Owen Graduate School of Management (Vanderbilt University), where more than 40% of the admitted students have to take part in an online math course. Some students, who believe that this is some sort of ‘punishment’, are reassured by the director of MBA admissions who explains that the course is only aimed at helping them.
GMAT or GRE: What Should I Choose?
Usually, all prospective business school students had to pass the GMAT, which involves good math skills. However, nowadays many business schools also accept another test, the GRE, which involves more ‘soft’ skills like humanities and social studies. Although in 2009 only 24% of business schools accepted GRE results, in 2017 this percentage grew to 91%. This option means that business schools now need more students coming from backgrounds previously non-traditional for MBAs.
Another Requirement: Try Being Nice
Actually, good quant skills aren’t the only strong requirement for aspiring MBAs: apparently, they also have to be nice to get admitted. According to Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth College), from now on they will look for four qualities in their prospective students: they will have to be nice, accomplished, smart and aware. The ‘nice’ part refers to high emotional intelligence, which means the skill to identify and manage emotions, both in self and others, or knowing that people’s behavior largely depends on emotions and influencing those emotions in difficult situations.
Obviously, there will be some criteria to evaluate the not-so-solid notion of ‘niceness’ which applicants will show in their essays and recommendations. There will be two essay questions now: apart from the usual ‘why have you chosen our school’, there will also be another one: ‘tell us how you helped other people succeed’.
At Stern School of Business (New York University), the emotional intelligence is evaluated based on a special ‘endorsement’ written by someone who knows the applicant very well and can testify to their ‘niceness’. It can be anyone: a supervisor, a mentor, a team member, a colleague or even a friend.
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