Tag Archives : Stanford GSB

Following Stanford GSB’s recent release of its admissions essays for the 2012-2013 admissions season, Stanford has just released its application deadlines for the coming year. Not too many changes, although the school’s Round 1 deadline keeps creeping a bit earlier. This can make your job seem tougher, but there is also a benefit in the grand scheme of things, which we discuss below.

Here are Stanford’s admission deadlines for the coming year, followed by our comments in italics:

Stanford Graduate School of Business Application Deadlines
Round 1: October 3, 2012
Round 2: January 9, 2013
Round 3: April 3, 2013

We get no shortage of inquiries from clients about the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which isn’t surprising given that it sits at or near the top of any significant ranking of MBA programs. What’s not to love about an elite, cozy MBA program in the heart of Silicon Valley? Still, we’re often disappointed by how little these applicants actually know about Stanford before they apply. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they begin the application process.

Are you thinking about applying to Stanford? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Stanford admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present five things that make Stanford GSB unique among top-ranked MBA programs:

Stanford GSB recently released its MBA admissions essays and deadlines for the 2011-2012 application season. You may notice some changes to the essays since last year; we’ll dig into those changes below.

Note that, as it has done for the past several years, Stanford’s admissions committee provides some high-level advice right on its own website. While we think this advice is generally good, we do think that most applicants can benefit from a more in-depth look at these essays. But, of course, any advice that comes straight from the horse’s mouth deserves your attention!

Stanford GSB sits at the top or right near the top of most major publications’ business school rankings. If you’re gunning for a top-tier MBA, chances are that you’ve at least considered sending an application to Stanford. But, besides knowing that it’s a small, top-ranked school with strong ties to Silicon Valley, how well do you really know Stanford? How do you know if it’s a good fit for you? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you know if the admissions committee will decide you’re a good fit for Stanford?

Yesterday the University of Chicago Booth School of Business announced that Stanford GSB’s Sunil Kumar will assume the role of Dean at the school. Kumar’s appointment ends a search that began seven months ago, after Edward A. Snyder announced in December that he would leave the school at the end of the academic year after serving nearly two full five-year terms at the head of the school.

A couple of weeks after announcing its application deadlines for the coming year, Stanford GSB has released its MBA application essays for 2010-2011. Bucking the trend that some other top business schools have exhibited so far this year, Stanford hasn’t made a single change to its essays. Accordingly, our advice mostly remains the same.

And the hits just keep coming this week. Just days after Wharton and Harvard announced their MBA application deadlines for the coming year, Stanford GSB has released its deadlines. Stanford’s essay topics have not yet been released, but we’ll analyze them here as soon as they come out.

Continuing our series of admissions insights clipped from Veritas Prep’s Annual Reports, our in-depth insider’s guides to 15 of the world’s top business schools, this week we take a look at six classes that are universally popular among Stanford GSB students. (Our Annual reports are absolutely free with registration, but we thought we’d share some snippets here to help get you started in your Stanford research.)

In a brief note on the school’s web site, the Stanford Graduate School of Business announced yesterday that its application is now online for the 2009-2010 admissions season. You can access Stanford’s application here.

Last week, the Stanford Graduate School of Business announced that Garth Saloner will be its next dean, succeeding Robert Joss, who has served as dean for the past 10 years. Saloner’s appointment is effective September 1, 2009.

Saloner joined the Stanford faculty in 1990, and is currently the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management and Economics. He also serves at director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Graduate School of Business. Saloner led the overhaul of Stanford’s MBA curriculum, making this a natural transition as the school seeks to maintain leadership continuity.

“Over nearly two decades at Stanford, Garth Saloner has demonstrated that he is not only a top-notch scholar, but also a respected leader among his peers and distinguished teacher highly-praised by his students,” President John Hennessy said in the school’s official announcement. “His scholarship in the areas of entrepreneurship and electronic commerce is particularly pertinent to our times and the global economy.”

Last week the Stanford Graduate School of Business released its admissions essay topics and deadlines for the 2009-2010 application season. Notably, as is the case with HBS, Stanford’s Round 1 deadline is now in the first week of October, and the school will now notify Round 1 applicants before the holidays at the end of the year.

We were a little surprised to see Stanford GSB’s Derrick Bolton post a message on Stanford’s blog last week encouraging anyone who’s on the fence to pull the trigger and apply to Stanford in this year’s Round Three. Could it be that the slow economy has hurt Stanford’s numbers? Could Stanford really need applicants this year?

Probably not. It’s doubtful that a school such as Stanford needs more applicants, or that the school’s yield has dropped much vs. previous years. What is true, though, is that Stanford’s Round 3 admissions deadline this year (April 8) is nearly three weeks later than last year’s, and no top business school has a Round 3 deadline nearly as late as Stanford’s. (Visit out site for a list of all business school admissions deadlines.) We’re not sure of Stanford’s reasons for this change, but it could be that Stanford made this move to snag a few extra top-tier candidates that HBS and Wharton, etc., may miss out on because of their earlier R3 deadlines. Now that Stanford is the last top school with its doors still open for 2008-2009 applicants, perhaps Bolton has so far been underwhelmed by the number (and quality?) of applicants that this strategy has brought in.

Recently Stanford GSB published its final job placement statistics for the Class of 2008.

Not surprisingly, consulting was the most popular single industry, with 27% of the class opting for a median starting salary of $1250,000 and a median signing bonus of $20,000. Private equity came next, at 14% of the class, with the median starting salary being $150,000 and the median signing bonus clocking in at $32,500.

Last week LaNeika Ward, Acting Assistant Director of MBA Admissions at Stanford GSB, posted the top ten most common mistakes that the admissions committee finds in applications.

Some of them are pretty amazing (e.g., “Enter your name correctly”), but smart people do indeed make mistakes! Other mistakes are very important things that can be easily forgotten while cramming to complete your applications, such as failing to provide a good reason for leaving any of your previous jobs.

Last week the Stanford GSB’s Center for Social Innovation announced the Social Innovation Fellowship Pilot Program to support social entrepreneurs.

The Fellowship was created for graduating Stanford MBAs who are ready to spend their first year after business school building a nonprofit venture. Starting this coming spring, a handful of second-year students will be selected to receive a stipend for the following year as well as access to the Center’s wide range of resources.

Stanford has just released its application essays for the 2008-2009 admissions season:

• Essay A: What matters most to you, and why?

• Essay B: What are your career aspirations? How will your education at Stanford help you achieve them?

• Essay C: Short Essays

Philip Knight, founder of Nike, has just set a record for largest single donation to a business school. He has pledged $105 million to Stanford, to aid in the construction of their new business school complex, appropriately named the Knight Management Center. Knight earned his master’s degree in business administration from Stanford in 1962. He has already made several smaller donations to the business school, but cites this as a “once-in-a-lifetime chance to give back to the school.”