Thursday, June 30, 2011

Your Salary = GMAT * 325 - $123,000





Find out the formula for predicting your starting post-MBA salary based on your GMAT score. Test Prep company, Knewton, released their analysis that every 10 points on the GMAT translates to an additional $3K in starting salary. Also Tom and Miro talk about what to do if your colleagues at your internship or new job are trying to undermine you.

(B) We have Great Show today.
We’ll quantify your worth based on your GMAT score
And discuss what to do when your team dismisses you as ‘just another MBA”

(1) Headlines: 10 pts on the GMAT worth $3000

Knewton CEO Jose “Giant Hands” Ferreira just released a video looking at starting salaries based on your GMAT score. Knewton found, you will earn an additional $3K for every 10 points in your GMAT score.

Here at the MBA show, we have looked at Jose’s data and created a handy formula you can use to determine your self worth.

[Show formula] Your salary = 325 * GMAT - $123,000

So, how are you doing Miro?

Well, let’s say, that I’m not exactly meeting expectations.

How so?

Actually, I took my starting salary, plugged it in and figured that I should roughly have scored a 380 on the gmat.

For those of you who have already taken the GMAT, we find this is a helpful tool to figure out how much you should be making.

you know this can only serve to make most people feel terrible about themselves.

That’s what we do here at the MBA Show.

Okay, let run some of the numbers

For a 500, $40K.
If you have a GMAT score of 700 your salary should be $105K

For those of you with big eyes, you can expect to break 100-grand when you hit 690.

Another neat way to use this is to figure out whether you should go to business school at all.

For example, suppose you’re currently making $60,000. Plug that into the formula, and you’ll see that you need to score at least a 570 on the GMAT, just to make it worth it to play the game at all!

So, how did Knewton figure this out?

Apparently, there is very high correlation between GMAT score, the school you attend. There is also a strong correlation between the school you attend and average starting salary.

Interestingly, the best-fit line, notably under-predicts salaries at the high end. Basically the people at the top get more than their fair share of the pie.

Let’s face it, anything else would simply be un-american.

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/06/22/ten-gmat-points-equal-3000-in-starting-pay/

Jargon - Breaking the MBAs
Companies I’ve worked at.

Wide-eyed and busy-tailed MBA is managing a company veteran.

The MBA says: In my operations class I have this amazing piece of analysis that will help us synergize backward-overflows. All it will take from you subordinate is just three weeks of work!

What happens?

As it turns out, someone who has worked at the company longer than you has many options for discouraging you, disuading you, embarassing you, undermining you, etc.

This is what we call breaking the MBA

Which brings us to our
Business School Tip of the week: We’ll be looking at what happens someone tries to break the MBA.

I will be suggesting ways for MBA’s to fight back.

Dazzle your subordinates with powerful MBA jargon. Such as using a runge-kutte approximation instead of the newton-raphson method.
Watch how quickly you will be made to look like an idiot in front of your boss when your subordinates respond in kind with industry and company jargon.

Explain to them that YOU are the boss.
Laugh at them

Load your subordinates down with meaningless, un-fulfilling tasks until they relent.
Don’t do those task

Schedule a meeting to discuss our relationship and certain challenge that I have been facing as an MBA.
Fail to go to meeting because you are playing foosball with the CEO

Fine, fine I give up! What the hell am I supposed to do with you god damn it!
Just acknowledge that I know more than you.

Fine. You know more that me. But, my business card is embossed.

What’s on your radar this weekend
Miro: 4th of July Staycation
Tom: I’ll be watching the fireworks from the MIT sailing pavilion.

Friday, June 24, 2011

How To Beat The New GMAT



Dave Wilson, President and CEO of the company that makes the GMAT explains the new Integrated Reasoning section to Tom and Miro. He also suggests why it's worth taking a hit to your social life in the first semester of b-school.


Dave is turning 70 this weekend and will be riding his bike 70 miles for TeamMBA, a brand for student volunteerism in business schools:

Join dave on his ride now here:
http://teammba.gmac.com/about/daves-70-70-70-ride.aspx

Saturday, June 18, 2011

What To Do When You Hate Your Internship



Many MBAs are starting their summer internships, and many of them have discovered they are miserable. Miro & Tom talk about what to do if you are one of them ... and some tips for business school deans on the job hunt.

We’ll provide Resume tips for business school Deans lookin’ for jobs
and talk about what to do if your Internship sucks

(1) Headlines: John’s Hopkins Dean Resigns

Yash Gupta has resigned abruptly as Dean of John’s Hopkins Carey School of Business. Gupta was the founding dean of the business school which was created in 2007. He left before his first class of full-time MBAs even graduated.

Big vote of confidence to those students Miro!

Students weren’t too sad to see him go. In the past 6 months his name came up as a finalist in 3 different university president or provost searches.

It’s always awkward to run across your Dean’s resume on Monster.com

An what a resume it was! We have a link at the site. The dean compiled a 41 page resume of his accomplishments.

I love this thing

I know you do Tom. I have come up with highlightst hat I think you will enjoy.

As the inaugural dean, I have been
charged to create a unique program that can leverage the strengths of Johns Hopkins.

That’s it? For a 41 pager, I would have expected something a little more concrete. For example, you’d like to see some numbers in there so you can get a sense of what was really accomplished.

“Graduated 0 full-time MBA Students”

“I have developed very strong relationships with Maryland legislators [sic] I have used my visits to Annapolis to share our vision for the Carey School with them, and have received an overwhelmingly positive response.”

Received overwhelmingly positive response.

Applied for consulting position with McKinsey. Received “Overwhelmingly positive response.”

Did you get that job?

If I had gotten the job, wouldn’t I have just said so?

[Cut away to McKinsey: Someone takes resume from job applicant and files is into one a bin labled “Overwhelmingly Positive Response” which is immediately adjacent to “Actual Job Offers”.]

To strengthen ties in the school community, I introduced Dean’s coffee sessions for faculty, staff and students, respectively to provide a venue for participants to talk directly to the dean.

This isn’t really a resume. It’s more like a calendar that has been exported to Microsoft word. Went to grocery store, And, received overwhelmingly positive response.

So, I’ve spent some time with this monster, and I think I can boil these 41 pages down to 1 message:

Please let me out of Baltimore! Seriously, have you seen the wire. It was based on reality.

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/05/24/the-b-school-dean-who-didnt-want-to-be-dean/
http://www.csv.vcu.edu/dev/provostsearch/pdfs/Gupta_CV.pdf

Jargon
The Say/Do Ratio

Remind me of what the Say/Do Ratio actually is.

It’s the ratio of things you say you’ll do, to the the things you actually do.

Ideally, you want to keep your say/do ratio as low as low as possible. That means minimizing what you promise, and maximising what you do do.

Some people call this under-promise and over-deliver.

What should the say-do ratio ideally be?

Well, it depends on the situation.

For example, if you say you’ll meet your friends at 6pm, you want try to keep those promises as close to 100% as possible.

Otherwise you’ll experience credibility collapse.

Shouldn’t we just keep the number as low as possible all the time?

Well, no, in government contracts for example, it is standard industry practice to under bid, typically by a factor of about 10:1. If you bid 1 to 1, you’ll quickly be out of business.


Business School tip of the week
Hate your internship? Congratulations!

This doesn’t sounds like casue for celebration

MBA’s, many of you out there are just starting your internships and for many of you, you are not liking it.

Are you sure this is good? This sounds like a disaster.

Compare the idea of a bad internship with the idea of having a bad job. One of the great things about the internship, is that it’s guaranteed to end in 2 months. Hate your intersnship? Congrats! You have just run a successful experiment.

It will probably be hard to appreciate right now.

Avoiding a terrible life-long career by discovering you hate it iearly with an internship is one of the main values provided by b-school

So, what do they do now if they hate it?

The first thing you want to figure out is whether you hate the industry, or you hate the culture of your specific firm. It may be that your job is bad because of the jerks you work with, or it maybe that your industry is full of jerks!

Tease: If you’re stuck in an internship you don’t like. You’ll want to stick around for our bonus content, where we’ll go over some specific steps you can take to help make it right.


What’s on your radar this weekend
Miro: Going to the Provincetown film festival.
Tom: Kim Harves is getting married. Congratulations Kim and Mark.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

A Very Special Graduation Message



This week, a very special address to the nation's graduating MBAs.

Friday, June 3, 2011

Which business school is toughest to get into?




(1) Our Guest
Stacy Blackman
http://www.stacyblackman.com/

(2) Jargon
Boil The Ocean

(3) Business School Tip of the Week
Behave Yourself!