How to balance your MBA life with only 168 hours in a week? Are you currently balancing your MBA life the way you want? Harry Kraemer is the author of Your 168: Finding Purpose and Satisfaction in a Values-Based Life. In this book, Kraemer has an exercise to help you find out how to balance your MBA life.
Business school applications are all about laying out how you have exhibited the qualities of a leader. After all, this is the quality that b-schools, in general, desire the most in their applicants. A lot of my admissions consulting clients struggle with a succinct definition of leadership. That is, one that they as the applicant can use as a succinct model.
The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College holds the distinguished title of first graduate school of management in the world. Founded in 1900, the school was quite literally the blueprint for every business school that followed and remains solidly in the top tier today. While there has been plenty of evolution behind Tuck’s hallowed doors over the years, the core values and traits which made Tuck a great business school have remained remarkably consistent. Here are three features of Tuck which make it unique:
Business schools are looking for leaders and expect applicants to have demonstrated leadership in their work and school history. Being a leader is so much a part of the MBA framework, in fact that you might be putting too much thought into what you have done and not enough into what you are doing.
This is a quick one, but a worthy one. "Leadership" might very well be the most "cussed and discussed" (hat tip, Harry Truman) word in the MBA landscape, given the prominence given to the concept by schools and candidates alike. But what I find surprising is that the word - which can be viewed so many ways - often takes on this strange meaning in b-school contexts, which is sort of a stand in for "accomplished." The idea of leadership has become titles and roles and responsibilities and kudos. Sort of a "he who has the most ribbons is the leader" kind of a dynamic. And while I will be the first to admit that leadership can indeed sometimes be about accolades (often leadership qualities get people recognized and/or recognition can give someone a platform from which to lead), it sort of misses the point. And nothing hammers that home like the Golden State Warriors, who were recently crowned NBA champs.